Wednesday, April 27, 2011

In "The Raven" how does the speaker try to comfort himself about the strange events in his study?getting at meaning

This poem begins with sorrow,
then moves into fright and
terror as the late night visitor freaks out the nearly
napping narrator. Think about that time between sleep and wakefulness when you aren't
exactly sure what's going on. When you hear a noise or see something, your mind stirs in
wonder about what just happened.


By about the seventh and
eighth stanzas, we begin to hear comforting language about
the events occuring in the house. He finds himself studying this bird that just sits
there. He notes it turned his "sad fancy into smiling." As he continued he uses words
like marvelled and blessed.


Finally, he combines comfort
with a pensive attitude in the verse:


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But the raven still beguiling all my soul into
smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then
upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking, Fancy unto fancy, think what this
ominous bird of yore... meant in
croaking 'Nevermore.'



We can
tell he is in a comfy chair, just sitting and wondering what this bird meant by the
phrase he keeps uttering: nevermore. He seems to enjoy the wonder of pressing his mind
to come to a conclusion about this. There is indeed something wonderful in moving to the
answer, the journey toward the answer, but not the answer itself. This is the moment of
confusion it seems to me that he finds himself comfortable in.

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