The Pit And The Raven, And The Raven By Edgar Allen Poe

Morgan Lainge
Ms. Mynatt
English 2 Honors
27 January 2023
Analytical Allusions
Through many of Poe’s works, he has shown and emphasized the importance of mythical figures. He has shown this by making the female characters captivating like goddesses, and comparable to angels, especially in his poems. Poe uses Roman, Greek mythology, and Biblical references to help readers understand his stories. Edgar Allen Poe’s works such as “To Helen”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and “The Raven” all use mythical figures to express beauty through his characters, to describe horror through his allusions, and to create suspense through his stories and poems.
Continuously throughout Poe’s works, such as “To Helen,” he writes about mythical figures to illustrate

Through the figure of Father Time, the Spanish hid a torture device, inside the seemingly harmless mythological figure from the Roman god Saturn to horrify the prisoner and make him want to die. “It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such as we see on antique clocks” (75), the description of Father Time is a common allusion, he is mostly known as the Grim Reaper though. Later the narrator discovered the actual use of the painted Father Time, he remarked, “While I gazed directly upward at it, I fancied that I saw in motion… I now observed--with what horror it is needless to say--that its neither extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the edges and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor.” (75). This blade was meant to cut through the man’s heart while he was restrained to the table. The figures that are depicted on the wall are shown as horrifying demons, especially when the walls are on fire as the narrator described, the walls closed in on him almost illustrating an image out of hell, and what the narrator thinks hell would look like, the

Poe creates suspense by making the reader wonder what’s going to happen next, this creates confusion. He also makes emotionally unstable narrators, the “The Raven” the narrator is mourning the death of Lenore. He emphasizes his condolences for Lenore by voicing, “From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore- / For the rare and reading maiden whom the angels name Lenore-” (189) he quotes her by saying that the beautiful Lenore is associated with angels, that’s why he says “the angels name Lenore” (189). Alongside the use of a mysterious woman in the poem Poe creates suspense around the fact of her death to the narrator, being mentally unstable. Using the device of suspense, Poe uses biblical references and Greek and Roman mythological characters like Athena, Pluto, Plutonian shore, and seraphim to help readers understand his writing. He included the Roman mythology reference to Pluto by saying, “Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore- / Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’¬¬s Plutonian shore!” (190). “Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor” (191). The readers can understand through common allusions. Greek mythology, which is familiar to most, is known to be suspenseful and could be a