The Raven Analysis Essay

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe starts out with an extremely dark mood of grief and sorrow. The setting of the poem is excruciatingly eerie giving the entire reading experience a very creepy and unsettling feel. Poe begins the poem with the lines, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” which already gives the poem a very dark and sad feeling (1). This is where the setting begins to unfold and is pictured. He then begins to talk about how he is drifting off and, “suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door” (3-4). Knowing that he is all alone and it is very late into the night, someone knocking on his door elevates the already highly sinister mood even more. Poe then goes on to convey that the setting is in a “bleak December,” to make the mood and setting even more dark and mysterious for the reader to imagine. He also builds up suspense throughout each stanza so that the setting has the most petrifying and ominous atmosphere that the poem possibly can possess. The lines in the poem also seem to speed up as the reader becomes more and more pulled into the poem by the mood and the suspense is heightened. …show more content…
This happens throughout the entire poem until the end where the main character and the setting begins to settle down some, bringing the mood down ever so slightly with it. As the narrator approaches the door and opens it, Poe states, “Here I open the wide door; Darkness there and nothing more,” giving the illusion that whatever was there cannot be seen or is in fact hiding from him (23-24). The suspense of the poem is built up even more as the reader is left to wonder what the creature was on the other side of the door that disappeared