Death, Loss And Beauty In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, a man who faced much critiquing during his time, wrote a poem centered around death, loss, and beauty, “The Raven”. Although in the twenty-first century this topic would seem odd and not many people could relate to the poem, during Poe’s time this type of poem was expected and praised highly. Poe, unlike most men, lost his mother at a very young age, causing him to worship females and hold them closer than males. Although this poem is about a young student who is “harassed” by a ghost that reminds him countless times of his lover, many people still are able to notice the similarities to Poe’s life. The themes reflected in “The Raven” convey the loss and death suffered by Edgar Allan Poe in his life. Edgar Allan Poe was …show more content…
This is very noticeable in his poem because the young student is trying to forget his beautiful love that died. Poe uses this theme to show the sorrow that he himself felt from his lost loves. “After choosing beauty as the province, Poe considered sadness to be the highest manifestation of beauty” (Hallquist 3). The sadness that Poe felt is shown throughout this poem when the student is mourning and being constantly reminded of the loss. Poe has always been greatly affected by death, in fact, Poe became very ill after Virginia’s death (Benton 4). This is very similar to the student because he is not able to forget his lost love and is constantly reminded of her with the pesky and demonic raven. Another relation of Poe’s and the student’s sorrow is when the student tells the bird to remove the beak from his heart. This becomes a symbol of the sorrow that they both shared (Enote 2). Many people feel that the death Poe faced in his earliest years may have shaped his writing in his later years. The death that was imminent in Poe’s life shaped the themes of death in this poem and the tone of sadness. Poe was able to turn the misfortunes of his life into a beautiful poem still read …show more content…
This relates to Poe in the sense that his first love Virginia had died and he was unable to forget her, mourning himself to sickness. Poe said he must combine the two ideas of the raven and the mourning lover (Szumski 142). Poe wanted to use an irrational thinking creature and also create a very rational scenario of the mourning lover in order to simulate the effects that love, beauty and death can have on a life. Poe relied on beauty greatly in the raven because he believed it could stimulate all senses of the human nature. Poe said, “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears” (Scraba 35). Poe knew throughout his life that he was going to use the beauty and love that he was exposed to in order to stimulate all senses of the