Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

Edgar Allan Poe, a writer, poet, editor and critic, who has added a remarkable and unique footprint in the American Literature. He is famous for many works such as The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the book Tamerlane and many poems including The Raven and Annabel Lee. Poe developed a new style of writing which is the Gothic Writing Style. Moreover, he is considered as a Dark Romantic poet. In his works he tackled themes like death, love, loss, individualism, hope and despair, nature and imagination. Through the themes, Poe has been able to beautifully describe his inner feelings, thoughts and experiences about everything in his life specially the death of his beloved wife. The previous points shall be explained and analyzed throughout the essay.

Biography

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809 and died in 1849. His parents were both actors and he has not known any of them; his father left the family early and his mother died when he was young. When Poe joined university; he was not able to pay for his fees and he ended up in debt. He struggled financially during his life. Moreover, he suffered from poor health and also from the impact of his wife’s death. Poe’s works were published during his life and after his death too, however unfortunately, he was more appreciated after his death not during his life. He earned a literary prize in 1843 for The Gold Bug.

Genre

Poe is regarded as a dark romantic writer. Dark Romanticism is a movement that emerged from the transcendental movement in the 19th century. The similarity between romanticism and dark romanticism is that they both appreciate nature whereas the second is more pessimistic and is all about appreciating the darker side of nature as storms, darkness, heavy rain, wind and thunder. Dark romanticism manifests that every person or a thing whether good or bad shall be directed towards sin and self-destruction. Moreover, dark romantic writers value emotions more than reality. The dark romanticism is seen through his words; deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before (Poe 3). Poe is known for his ability to hide the fine line between fact and fiction. Furthermore, he has always developed a unique way to combine horror and mystery and present them in an imaginative way and also he created a genre called Detective Fiction; which gave him the name of Father of the Detective Stories.

Style

 Poe created a new style of writing called Gothic writing style which is even much darker and more pessimistic. It is concerned about tormenting the self, judgment, punishment, terror, supernatural things and guilt. Poe embraced his new style with structure of the sentences, punctuation, word choice, tone and figurative language. He uses commas, semicolons, exclamation marks and dashes in punctuation to show his point of view and also he describes beautifully the situation by using the figurative language. While reading Poe’s works, one finds themselves torn in their thoughts and provoked by their emotions. Equally important, Poe’s works are known for being musical and harmonic. The reason behind that is that he does not reach the musicality only through the rhyme and meter but also through rhetoric excess, imagery and word choice. Finally, he uses allusions to myths to show the timeliness of his works and his beloved which in fact became true and his works are living till our present time.

Conclusion

To conclude, Poe is a unique writer that has a certain way to express his feelings and emotion. His works are focused mostly on the outcast and bizarre. Just as his tragic life, many of his works might seem normal at the beginning but when the readers approach the end, they find how tormenting and harsh the life is. His whole works are totally inspired from his own experiences and imaginations and he has always acted as an inspiration to others. Finally, his works are used as models till our present time for the writers a guide to follow in order to improve their capabilities and outcome.

Works Cited

“Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Writing Style Essay”, https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Analysis-of-Edgar-Allan-Poes-Writing-Style-P3A3AUAVJ

 ”Dark Romanticism - Study Guide”, https://americanliterature.com/dark-romanticism-study-guide

 ”Edgar Allan Poe Biography”, https://www.biography.com/people/edgar-allan-poe-9443160

Taylor, W.L. Illustrations. E.P Dutton and Company: 1883