The Raven

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I would like to know the meaning of the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2002

Answers

Poe's own mischievous and disingenuous essay "The Philosophy of Composition" at www.eapoe.org is a good start. Other articles at www.poecentral.com. Poe's own explanation is important more for the theme he is trying to present rather than how he actually wrote it. "a mournful and never-ending remembrance" is what the bird and the poem symbolizes, the narrator working himself into this dead end through a manic dialogue/monlogue with the Raven's ironic timing of the word "Nevermore."

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2002

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