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Comparing The Tell-Tale Heart And The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

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When thinking about Gothic literature one author stands out among the rest. Edgar Allen Poe and his works have been celebrated throughout the centuries because of their strange, ominous, and morbid nature. From “The Cask of Amontillado” to “The Tell-Tale Heart” each story is infused with dread, terror, and the uncertainty. They have compelled the reader to decipher through what is horror and what is reality again and again. Possibly one of Poe 's most notable works, the narrative poem, The Raven, is no different in this aspect, but this poem does contain two ideas that may be overlooked as being horrifying. Heaven and hell are widely believed among people of many races and religions but they are not concrete. In The Raven, Poe plays upon this …show more content…
While this man is harrowing a lost loved one, named Lenore. The opening stanza sets the poem in the chambers of a scholarly man, but comes into events that he can not so easily explain. The first unexplainable and supernatural event occurs when the narrator is reading a book and is about to fall asleep. But he hears a knock on his chamber door in the middle of the night, that wakes him up (Poe, 602). He goes to open the door and there is nothing before him but darkness (Poe, 602). Around line 6, Poe is really enforcing the bleakness of the setting (Poe, 601). He states that it is December and its a dark and dreary night (Poe, 601). Poe does this create suspense for the events to follow. Stricken with loneliness because of his beloved Lenore, the speaker was anticipating to find a sign of her. The narrator begins to wonder about what happens after life in this instance. He wonders if he will be with Lenore again or if he will spend eternity in the darkness that he saw when he opened his chamber door. This is a prophecy the narrator is hoping to deflect but is ultimately condemned to when the raven comes. This is where we first see the speaker battling with the forces of heaven and hell, his battling creates this suspense of dread throughout the

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