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Theme Of Love In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

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With February being a month where love is in the air, it is suitable that this essay investigates the issue of when loves crosses the line into obsession. The poems, “The Raven” and “Annabell Lee,” share more than just Edgar Allan Poe as their author. Both poems show what happens to a person and their love when they are consumed by grief, loneliness, and madness. Furthermore, it is through this display that leads the poems to challenge whether love is made stronger through death. The occupation of the narrator’s thoughts in Poe’s most renowned poem, “The Raven,” is a woman named Lenore. Almost immediately, the reader knows of Lenore’s death and the effect it has on the narrator. He says how he is full of “sorrow for the lost Lenore / For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore” (Poe 613). It is also apparent that the narrator deeply loves Lenore and is reasonably saddened that she is dead. His obsession for Lenore is not evident yet, but in the next mention of her it becomes increasingly so. When he opens his door after hearing someone knocking, he looks into the darkness and believes he hears her name being whispered. However, it is he who is whispering “and an echo murmured back the word, Lenore!” (Poe 613). He feels her presence everywhere, desperately thinking that it might be Lenore who is knocking. Once he starts talking to the raven, his hysteria reaches its climax as he shouts “respite and Nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! / Let me quaff this
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