Analysis_Of_The_Raven_(The_Poem,_Itself,_And_Its_Symbolism)

Analysis Of The Raven (The Poem, Itself, And Its Symbolism) The Raven has been one of the most recognizable works in American poetry because of its haunting, music-like quality. It is also known for its hypnotic sound and uniform tone of melancholy. Poe needed to create a masterpiece people could remember him by. He used all of his best writing talents in his poem; repetition, parallelism, internal rhyme, alliteration, and assonance, so that he would be committed to the memories of all people for countless generations. In his essays, Poe defended beauty and pleasure as the primary concerns of poetry and was very much against excessive length. (Funk & Wagnalls, 104) He, therefore, chose his yet-to-be-written poem to be around 100 lines long—short enough to be read in one sitting, but long enough to be enjoyed by readers and to fill up a few pages. Once written, his poem was exactly 108 lines long. Always contrary to the mainstream, Poe decided to write his newest poem backwards; first, to figure out the effect, then the plot, and then the writing of the actual work. Because Poe believed that “beauty is the sole legitimate province of [a] poem,” he made the theme and effect of bird, narrator, poe, raven, poem, nevermore, because, now, word, lenore, been, death, again, remember, one, just, believed, beauty, people, needed, memories, best, being, writing, works, very, sitting, refrain, philosophy, out, once, nor, itself, door, decided