Gothic Literature in the Raven “The Raven,” written by Edgar Allen Poe, is one of the most famous pieces of Gothic Literature ever created. Throughout the poem you can recognize many elements of gothic literature. One of them is the high levels of emotion the main character feels, be it sorrow or fear. Supernatural occurrences are frequent in the poem as well, one of which involves a talking bird. The mysteriousness of the poem also helps display the gothic feeling and sets the mood for the poem as being sad and gloomy. The poem opens with a description of the night to create a spooky setting and set the mood as dark and dreary. This element of mystery portraying this setting really enhances the poem. It starts out as this which helps get …show more content…
The elements Poe chose perfectly displayed the aspects of gothic literature. The effect/purpose of gothic literature is to give the reader a sad or terrified feeling when reading the books or poems that belong to it. They also try to show suspense to keep the reader guessing and on the edge of their seat throughout reading. Aspects like mystery which could keep people guessing, supernatural which expands upon creativity so authors can implement scarier characters or plots, and high emotions to keep the reader intrigued. All these aspects/elements together succeed in their goals to help make the characters more exaggerated and shape the …show more content…
As we know this is the raven, who comes in later. When he saw the raven, his second conclusion was that he believed it was a demon. This scares the man as he believes the bird is there to hurt him, but when he talks to it, he seems to calm down. When the narrator asks the bird about getting to see and touch Lenore, the raven responds with nevermore. This strikes fear in the narrator as it means he will never be able to see his soulmate again. This adds to the story as it becomes one of his main questions and concerns for the raven. It is used for us to find out the narrator's goal is to rekindle his relationship with his lost wife, Lenore, and he is very fearful that this will not happen. As the narrator is processing the horrifying fact of never seeing his lover again, he is struck by a debilitating sorrow. This is another one of the emotions that is prominent in the narrator. What we discover in the beginning is that the narrator is mourning the loss of his wife, and this only gets worse as the story progresses and he is informed of not being able to be with her again. This emotion plays one of the biggest roles as it is the theme/message of the whole poem. It brings in topics like how people live with death and how people handle grief differently. It drastically enhances the poem as it makes the reader start to feel bad