Sunday, December 15, 2019

As the poem progresses, how does the speaker's attitude toward the raven change?

The poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe is, like most of Poe's work, rather dark, but we see a definite change of tone from the first stanza to the last.
In the first few stanzas of the poem, the narrator hardly even acknowledges the raven. He thinks it's a visitor of some sort, and he is unconcerned and unbothered. However, the tension rises when the narrator opens the door and finds only darkness on the other side. He then opens the window, and finally, the raven enters the poem.
At first, the narrator is more curious than anything. Even the bird's speech, "Nevermore," mostly just surprises him. He is fairly ambivalent about the raven; in fact, he even mourns the fact that by morning, the raven will surely have flown away.
After a long time of watching the raven, the narrator begins to think again of his lost love, and he begins to grow angry at the bird for the memories it evokes. He begs the raven for any other word, but the bird's bleak response is the same. The torment drives the speaker to shouts of desperation and hatred, as though the raven represents every suffering he has gone through in life.

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