Elise Muether Mrs. Gudorf Honors English 10 4 March 2023 SPR #6: Mystery, Tension, and Surprise Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee” are both poems that create a sense of mystery, tension, and surprise through their unique structures. While Poe’s poem follows a consistent and repetitive structure, Service’s poem is more flexible and uses a variety of different structures to create suspense. Through their use of structure, these poems effectively engage the reader’s imagination and emotions, leading them to a surprising conclusion. In “The Raven,” Poe uses the repetitive structure of the poem to create tension and anticipation. The poem consists of eighteen stanzas, each with the same rhyme scheme and meter. The repetition of the words “nevermore” at the end of each stanza builds a sense of dread and foreboding. By beginning more than one stanza with “‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil!—prophet still” and ending evenmore stanzas with “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’” readers feel suspense (Poe). Additionally, the structure of the poem creates a sense of …show more content…
The poem consists of nine stanzas, each with a different rhyme scheme and meter. Using rhymes such as “with grisly fear;” and “ventured near;” as well as “the furnace roar;” and “‘Please close that door.” readers are left feeling uncertain (Service). The author uses this variety to create a sense of unpredictability, as the reader never knows what structure the next stanza will take. Additionally, the poem’s narrative structure, which follows the speaker’s journey with Sam McGee’s body, creates a sense of tension as the speaker struggles to fulfill his promise to his friend. The final stanza, in which Sam McGee’s body is finally cremated, is a surprising conclusion that leaves the reader with a sense of both closure and mystery, as the speaker’s fate is left