I just wanted to know in the poem, THE RAVEN, is Lenore Edgar Allan Poe's wife? I know that he had married his cousin but I am not sure of who her name was. Can someone please summerize the meaning/theme of this poem. I would really appreciate it if someone summerized the meaning of this poem because I am confused. Please??? THANK YOU!

Angeline

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2002

Answers

yes she was the his wife asn she had passed away right before he wrote this poem. So he wrote this poem of this bird that haunts him in his dreams telling him that he will never be happy again, that he will die miserably without ever finding her, or rather instead of telling him anything it leaves him with the uncertainty that gives him that opinion. He feels tortured adn in the end gives up.

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2002

Uh, Virgina died in 1847 while the Raven came out in 1845, before she was even sick with tuberculosis, I believe. In any event several stories and poems deal with this popular theme which became cruelly all too real. Poems that may directly deal with Virgina are also hard to pin down except for "Eulalie" "Ulalume" and "Annabel Lee."

The fate of the narrator in the Raven seems like Poe's own view of his fate, trapped under the shadow of loss, blighted, in stasis and unable to have confidence in spiritual hope or consolation from the memory that silently oppresses him. He already had experienced some losses and loneliness long before he met Virginia.

-- Anonymous, March 21, 2002