The Raven Theme

During the early and mid-1800s, Edgar Allan Poe was the master of horror and suspense literature (Cestre). One of Poe’s most recognized themes of his works includes “his cultivation of mystery and the macabre” (Cestre), along with Romanticism, the occult, and the satanic (Cestre). In order to write such cryptic and morose stories, Poe uses his “idealism and musical gift as a poet, his dramatic art as a storyteller” (Cestre), and craft storylines from his own dreams (Cestre). These themes are often expressed in Poe’s writing (Cestre). Poe expresses the theme of mourning a loved one and how tortured one’s soul can become from both loss of close figures in a person’s life and subtle disturbances during one’s weakest emotional state (Poe, “Edgar” Allan). In “The Raven,” Poe utilizes a rhyme scheme, repetition, personification, and imagery to establish and express the mournful theme of the main

Also, Poe utilizes the complex rhyme scheme, “abcbbb” (Buranelli 97) to create an attention grabbing musical effect on the reader, along with emphasizing the setting in the poem (Poe). The raven’s repetition of “nevermore” (48), along with its effect on the main character’s mental state, emphasizes the gloomy and morose storyline of the “The Raven” (Poe). Poe also writes a detailed description of the raven in order to create an image, and writes an ambiguous meaning of why the raven enters the main character’s home (Poe). In addition to the raven’s mysterious origin, Poe utilizes personification to give the raven the ability to speak the one English word, building a more complex and mournful addition to the theme (Poe). In “The Raven,” Poe utilizes a rhyme scheme, repetition, personification, and imagery to establish and express the mournful theme of the main character’s fragile emotional