Literature

Introduction
In general life is full of ups and downs that may cause us pain, grief and torture and because we don’t know how to deal with such conditions, we end up looking for alternative sources that would make us feel comfortable in one way or another. More often than not, the things or methods we choose to get a distraction from the pain we have are always not positive, though they give us a sigh of relief and some sort of comfort that for a while we forget we had some problem, they always end up tormenting us so much. In his poem, he revolts to taking alcohol so that he can forget about his dead wife, which leaves him addicted to alcohol. Raven in this context simply means a glorified crow that eats small animals, seeds, fruits and carrion which is often used to refer to bad luck or bad omen.
Raven is a poem that talks about a man who lost his wife Lenore. A talking bird has just given him a visit and the only word it can say is nevermore. The narrator feels sad because he has lost the love of his life, who happened to be his wife. His pain and grief makes him to see the bird as a prophet who has brought bad news that they shall never see each other again, even in heaven, they will never reunite and be together again. In his description, Poe says that the poem is one that tries to reveal a humans desire to torture himself (Poe pp 10). One of the themes he tries to bring out is that of grief and beauty. He says that they are closely related and they can easily make a man to shed tears.
Am going to analyze the first stanza. The first lines of the poem have been used to identify the speaker as a person who is weak and tired. He is awake because he lost his wife and her thoughts are taking the better part of him. He is seen reading an ancient book of knowledge that keeps him awake into the middle of the night. It contains alliteration of the letter W (Simms 42). They are found in the words weary and weak which bring about the effect of unsteadiness and instability. Within this stanza, we come about a rhythmical pattern of the words dreary and weary that sets the ground for more rhymes to follow. The speaker in the poem goes on to say that he becomes more tired and begins to doze off. He is awakened by the sound which he assumes to be a quite knock on the door. The knocks lead to a creation of rhyme as a style i.e. napping, tapping and rapping that lead to creation of a musical effect. His use of the word nothing more leads to the birth of the word nevermore that forms the basis of the poem. It is initially presented in a low key probably assuming that the knock on the door is that of a late visitor.
One of the major themes brought about by the first stanza of this poem is that of loneliness and isolation or in other words the undying devotion he ...