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Setting
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Stylistically, “The Raven” reads more as poem than prose. While the story is swift-moving and narrative-driven, the careful craft of its language relies on heavily poetic devices like rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration. Consider the opening lines, with alliterative consonants bolded:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."
From this first stanza through to the end of the story, Poe carefully adheres to a strict rhyme scheme of ABCBBB. The B rhyme, furthermore, is always an “or” sound like “lore,” “door,” “floor,” “Lenore,” and, of course, “Nevermore.” Reading “The Raven” aloud brings these rhymes and the consistent, lilting rhythm of each line to life, and Poe’s careful adherence to this repetitive scheme creates the uneasy, trance-like aura of the whole story. Gradually, the narrator's voice becomes more and more insistent and more and more frantic as he beseeches the Raven to inform him of Lenore's fate and then tries to rid himself of the bird altogether. This growing desperation is mirrored in Poe's stylistic choices. See, for example, the following lines from the very end of the poem. Repetition and alliteration join the rhyme and rhythm to paint a clear picture of the madness felt by the narrator at the Raven's persistent presence:
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!
By repeating phrases--"still is sitting, still is sitting"--Poe conveys a certain frantic tone to the narrator's voice, amplified by the use of italics for only the third time in the entire story. Meanwhile, alliterative choices like the plosive sounds of "pallid bust of Pallas" convey a certain disgust. All the while, he cranks up the use of in-line rhymes (flitting/sitting/sitting, seeming/dreaming/streaming) in addition to the original rhyme scheme. The rapid rate of the rhyming lends increased velocity to the verse and carries the desperate momentum of the narrator's turmoil to the conclusion of the story.
