• Short Story Samples of Poe's Stylistic and Thematic Gifts
• Poe's Masterful Use of the Doppelganger
• Poe's Contribution to Detective Fiction
• Stylistic and Thematic Techniques in Poe’s Poetry

Short Story Samples of Poe's Stylistic and Thematic Gifts

Edgar Allan Poe’s popular short stories “Ligeia,” "The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” serve as fine samples of his stylistic and thematic gifts. Although Poe’s stories vary in their intensity, ideas, and characters, these particularly share his unique gifts of description, first-person narrative, and detail. His mastery of language, setting, and fascination with the workings of the human mind and psyche are reflected in this particular group. Surprisingly, Poe uses fairly simple plot lines. This element of style is often hidden by his layers of description and complicated vocabulary. For instance, in his important and widely-taught story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe embellishes the fairly simple plot with the dense description of the house and grounds and the feature-by-feature description of Roderick Usher and his ailments so that the reader becomes convinced of the story’s complexity. Poe uses such techniques as a story within a story, an ailing sister who dies and is buried, and Roderick’s increasingly odd behavior to achieve the effect of deep mystery in a straightforward plot. Rather than saying, for instance, “The first sight of the house depressed me,” the narrator says, “I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.”

The complexity of sentence structure varies in stories in which the primary character strives under intense emotional stress as Poe uses this technique to define the character. In “Ligeia,” the narrator, a grieving husband, describes his first wife, Ligeia, minutely, not just her physical beauty but also her intelligence, which engage his utter love, not to say fanatic devotion. “An intensity in thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition … .” The narrator uses the same attention to detail as he describes the bridal chamber he designs for his second bride. Coating after coating of detail builds so that when the macabre ending occurs, the reader has been prepared, just as the child-bride has been possessed.

The narrator in “The Pit and the Pendulum” also asserts his character in the keen attention to every detail of his ordeal through sophisticated, ornate sentences. “The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.” Through his staunch awareness of what happened to him moment by moment, he maintains his sanity.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” works as a prime example of simple plot, an abrupt ending, and Poe’s use of different sentence length to establish a character’s personality. The narrator raps out sentences in a style quite different from any of the other stories examined so far: “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!” The plot, as simple as possible, has a man cold-bloodedly murdering another, burying the corpse in such a way that he should get away with the crime, yet his guilt makes him susceptible to “hearing” the heart beating so that he gives himself away.

Poe mixes his complex sentence structure and vocabulary to create the rhythm essential to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The plot in the first detective story (which no less writer than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cites as his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes) certainly cannot be called simple, but the narrator prepares the readers for something out of the ordinary as he begins with a discussion that would not be out of place in a philosophy book. However, as a well-rounded writer, Poe gives the central character of the story, Dupin, the detective, a voice that speaks in proverbs and wisdom: “Thus there is such a thing as being too profound.” Or “They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse.”

“The Cask of Amontillado,” with perhaps Poe’s most forthright narrator, plot, and his most common theme of secret burial, is one of Poe’s tensest stories. He uses his effective techniques to draw the readers along even though they know how the story will end. Montresor, the narrator, declares, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” Montresor has passionlessly planned revenge. As he leads Fortunato through the catacombs of his family vault, he feels no compunction about his plan. Poe mixes dialogue through this story as he does in “Rue Morgue,” but Montresor shows his steadfast desire to carry out his revenge by mockingly pointing out the dangers of the tunnels, by teasing his enemy with other kinds of wine, by appealing to his conceit—all in short, non-informational sentences—whereas Dupin’s conversation draws his audience along to form the same conclusions that he forms. So, stylistically, Poe naturally uses long sentences and involved descriptions with a vocabulary that drew from European and Latinate sources.

Thematically in these stories, settings serve as character, startling and important. Imagine Roderick Usher without his crumbling mansion about him; its murky tarn, skeletal trees, windows like eyes all present before anyone even entered the house to discover the twins ailing from a hereditary illness. Ligeia’s husband’s fanaticism about her somehow created the bridal chamber with tapestries and furniture endowed with some sort of life force, vivid and strange, yet absolutely necessary to the story. The “Pit and Pendulum” has to have the inch-by-inch exploration by the narrator to give the sense of claustrophobic fear to the reader, as well as the terror of his finding danger every time he thinks he has rescued himself. Dupin’s description of the apartment and the outer windows in the Rue Morgue give atmosphere and understanding, enabling him to solve the difficult crimes. Even “The Tell-Tale Heart” uses setting as the narrator speaks of how small the house is that he and the old man share, thus making his murder and confession more easily committed.

The workings of the human mind and the human psyche remain by far the most important and interesting themes in Poe’s fiction. He looks at this through first-person narrative, either as an observer, or as a perpetrator, or as a victim. Poe’s writings become richly immersed in the state of mind of the person telling the story. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator insists that he is not mad in a flurry of words and examples that prove completely otherwise. Poe gives the madman complete recall of the complex plot he unfurled mixed with a lack of a motive for his murder. As Poe explores the mind under the influence of a strong drug in “Ligeia,” her widower admits to using opium regularly. After her death, he becomes addicted to opium; consequently, he lists with close particularity all the things that happen as his bride, Rowena, dies, then seems to regain life, and dies again, through a long night, until he accepts as only a madman—or a drug addict—might that Rowena’s body has been possessed by Ligeia.

The narrator/observers in “Usher” and “Rue Morgue” both act as spectators who can view the situations and characters objectively. The narrator of “Usher” necessarily sees and experiences the end of the family and the mansion—he has to survive to carry the tale on, and he must tell all the specifics of the appearance of Roderick and Madeline, of the interior of the house, and of course of the terrible interment of the sister. The “Rue Morgue’s” narrator is essential to show the reader how amazing Dupin’s intellect is. He marvels at Dupin’s ability to follow his own mind segue and then the way Dupin sorts through the many fine points of the murders, solving them as well as saving an innocent man’s life. Poe’s interest in the possibilities offered by high intellect found in some men is reflected in Dupin and the victim of the inquisition especially. Both operate analytically; the inhabitant of the deep abyss keeps his wits about him through terrifying situations. He realizes he is not buried alive—a psychological victory; he measures his prison; he discovers the pit and determines its depth; he even reasons out a way for the rats to free him from death by the pendulum. He holds on through rationality until rescue comes.

Poe’s stories use the themes of impending death, or murder, or the death of a beloved one, and the impact of those deaths on the mind and psyche of characters throughout these six stories. Further themes involve setting as character and the emotions of guilt and revenge. The stylistic manipulation of sentence structure, from complex and even convoluted to short and bullet-like, with vocabulary that ranges from European quotations to Latinate complement the whole of Poe’s writing to make his work well worth the time to study and absorb, not simply eerie stories, but stories that examine his fellow creatures and understand them to a stunning degree.

Poe's Masterful Use of the Doppelganger

A doppelganger is defined as a "ghostly counterpart of a living person; a double." Edgar Allan Poe is a master of using this figure to tap into human consciousness by elucidating the reflection between his protagonist and antagonist. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Mask of the Red Death," and "The Fall of the House of Usher," to name a few, Poe creates a psychological realm where the key to the story is having his central male character face off with himself, in a sense.

In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator's hatred of his victim's eye drives him to murder. Though superstitions about the "Evil Eye" were widespread during those times, the narrator of this story does not seem to fear his victim's "pale blue eye," but rather hates it. The equating of the "Evil Eye" with the "evil I" has been noted by several critics and could not have escaped Poe's attention. Like Poe's William Wilson, the madman is killing his own doppelganger, and the further identification with his victim is found in his feeling the old man's terror as if it were his own, and his fantasy that he can actually hear the old man's heartbeat. Guilt is a major theme of the tale, and the attack on the objectification of the self fits well.

"The Mask of the Red Death" has several allegorical elements, including the seven rooms of the imperial suite representing the seven decades of life, the symbolism of the color of the rooms and the masked figure that represents death itself. The opening passage "The 'Red Death' had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and horror of blood," purports that the Red Death is not merely a pestilence, but an Avatar and seal, something that is destined. For purposes of commenting on life and of achieving his single effect, Poe chooses to emphasize death. He is aware not only of the brevity of all life and of its inevitable termination but also of men's isolation: blood, the visible sign of life, is, Poe says, "the pest ban which shuts him out from the aid and sympathy of his fellow man." In the trap of life and in his death, every man is an island. If there is a mutual bond, it is the shared horror of death. Death turns out to be the fatal, inevitable twin of life.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" contains elements of the conventional gothic melodrama, where the common fate of twins is the chief vehicle for both Poe's effect of terror and of his psychological rationalization of the terror. Though Roderick's dissociation of personality has countless external correlatives from the fissure in the house to his physical and intellectual idiosyncrasies, his psychic condition, in the casual sense, cannot be clearly understood unless it is directly related to the illness of his twin sister. Madeline is a visible embodiment of the alter ego. She stands for the emotional or instinctive side of her brother's personality, which has stagnated under the domination of the intellect. But as attested by the interior poem, a synecdoche of his conflict and its outcome, these repressed feelings will ultimately revolt against such tyranny. This turn of events is symbolized in the disappearance of the house and its occupant into the storm-tossed waters of the tarn. In sum, the outraged unconscious swallows up all conscious authority, and Roderick is rendered completely insane. As Madeline escapes her death-in-life confinement on the literal level of action, on the psychological level the instincts (or alter ego) attain their release. Thus, the two levels of reality in the tale are brought into perfect conjunction, and the twin motif is the structural device that controls the final synthesis of form and, inevitably, tone.

In most of Poe's short stories, the role of the doppelganger is tantamount. Not only do the characters have doubles, but so do themes, purposes, and results. According to Poe, the very universe is splintered. In so delving into the human psyche, Poe helps the reader to not only delve into the characters' inner demons but also his own.

Poe's Contribution to Detective Fiction

Many critics, scholars, writers, and fans alike agree that Edgar Allan Poe is indisputably one of the inventors of detective fiction. Evidence of his contributions lay not only in his employment of the detective's sidekick/narrator, a Dr. Watson-like man who relays information to the voyeuristic reader, but also in the classic attributes that define his "armchair" detective. In Poe's tales of ratiocination, the characters of C. Auguste Dupin ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," and "The Purloined Letter") and William Legrand ("The Gold-Bug") are imbued with qualities that are now recognized as quintessential detective traits; the use of common sense and intuition prevail over scientifically precise but procrustean evidence, and the detective has distinct similarities to his adversary. Poe's investigator has a certain understanding of the human spirit combined with a detached analysis of data. These elements, set in a world where truth is the beacon at the end of the labyrinth of the tale, symbiotically form an enduring character that is ultimately both poet and mathematician.

In the gothic and gruesome "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Dupin initially comes off as a somewhat bumbling man who "plays detective" in a mystery-solving quest, at the same time allowing his own desires to shape physical clues, leading to embarrassing false conclusions. His methods of investigation are really quite vulnerable to the scrutiny of the true analyst. At other times, Poe seems to imply that heightened intuition can be equivocal to another theme that pervades his tales, madness. In "The Gold Bug," the narrator believes his friend, William Legrand, has gone mad when he observes the "plain evidence" of his friend's "aberration of mind" on their excursion for Captain Kidd's buried treasure. Legrand's nascent sensibilities seem to fleetingly metastasize into insanity.

Along with intuition and a touch of madness, there is a bit of the mystic in Poe's detectives, particularly Dupin. Dupin discusses his deductive methods with no one else but the narrator, thereby giving him an opportunity to create an impression of a magical performance because we never clearly see how he gets and adds up his facts. He develops a high art that is the signature of detective fiction: revealing the mystery's solution in a way that is sudden for the client and others but delayed for the detective, who has known the solution for some time. In "The Purloined Letter," Dupin has recovered the stolen letter long before he reveals or explains the facts. In "The Gold-Bug," after a succession of odd maneuvers that lead to treasure, the narrator is confounded by how Legrand was able to effectively conclude where the gold was buried. What at first seems like supernatural events turns out to be not only Legrand's mere deduction of information but also Poe's way of not playing fair with the reader. A master gamesman and puzzleman himself, he loves to keep his readers active in the solving of the mystery.

Throughout the Dupin tales, the detective progressively proves himself a man rooted in common sense, not to his or our detriment, which leads ultimately to the solution of his mystery. To Dupin, truth is simple to find, it is not "always in a well … but upon the mountaintops." This is a philosophical premise throughout Poe's detective tales. Another method that Dupin uses besides common sense to seek out the truth is science, i.e. optics and astronomy. The light of the stars "grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it" is an example of Dupin's "scientific" comparisons that typify epistemological principles, empirical evidence is used to explain the failure to recognize the truth. In terms of finding out the truth, Dupin does not rely much on science. Better yet, he assumes a scientific pose using philosophical methods.

The last distinction of Poe's detective fiction is the psychic identification between the detective and his opponent. "The Purloined Letter" is built around pairings and reflections to suggest a psychic identification between Dupin and Minister D—. The fact that Minister D— is always discussed second-hand and never appears himself alludes to a certain oneness of the two characters. Dupin, as basically a thief for hire in this tale, is displayed beautifully as the same side of one coin, yin-yang, detective/thief, poet/mathematician. In his meeting with the Prefect, they discuss the culprit behind the stolen letter, and the Prefect comments, "Not altogether a fool … but then he's a poet, which I take to be only one remove from a fool." The reader thereby understands that the Prefect operates with only half of his capacities; the reader may then choose to identify with Dupin, who confesses in an ironically self-deprecating way that he himself is "guilty of certain doggerel." Dupin eventually combines the quantitative skills of the mathematician (respected in the culture) with the qualitative powers of the poet (assumed to be a fool) and finds the stolen letter in the Minister's apartment.

Combining a "calculus of possibilities" with the shadowing of the spirituality of the most intangible aspects of a case, Poe's "armchair" detective uses logic and intuition to find truth. However, the detective is not only on the page but in our minds because we become the real detectives of Poe's stories by untangling the web of the story and discovering the unsuspected capabilities of our own minds. We, too, are both poet and mathematician.

Stylistic and Thematic Techniques in Poe’s Poetry

Although literary critics find Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry trite, predictable, and banal, citing his rhyme schemes, rhythmic patterns, and subject matter as rationale for not placing it among great American poetry, they cannot argue that readers often choose his most famous pieces such as “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” “The City in the Sea,” Ulalume,” “To Helen,” and, of course, “The Raven” as their favorite poems. While Poe’s poetic works may not have the same claim to classical fame that his short stories do, unarguably, once read, they tend to stay in the readers’ minds. This phenomenon lies primarily in Poe’s stylistic and thematic practices throughout his poetry.

Like his short stories, Poe’s poetry often uses gothic themes as the central topics. The death of a loved one, weird, strange, and unearthly settings, animals that have sinister character, ominous meanings to common objects all occur in Poe’s verses just as they do in his stories. In fact, Poe tells stories in his poems, a common stylistic element that aids in keeping his poetry in the memory. Both “Annabel Lee” and “To Helen” are love poems. “To Helen” is a simple lyric poem. The poet Poe was renown for altering the dates when poems were first published as well as telling different people (usually women) that the poems were dedicated to them. He had varied reasons for this, primarily his financial situation that remained precarious throughout his life.

“To Helen” could easily be a love poem to any woman. Its lyric style, placing the central character in ancient lands, worked for any woman he wanted to compliment. What woman would not want to be remembered with beauty of “classic face” that would have been glorified in ancient Greece and Rome? Who would have denied beauty compared to a lamp that would draw homesick wanderers home? Poe uses ababb rhyme scheme in the three stanzas and allusions to classical references such as Helen of Troy, the standard of absolute beauty, to Naiads, water nymphs known for beauty and grace. His rhythm four iambs in a line—with the only exception the final line—a rocking beat that gives the sense of the boat approaching the light held by the “agate lamp within thy hand.”

“Annabel Lee,” also a love song, tells a story and therefore is far better known to others than Poe aficionados. Although female contemporaries of Poe have argued about to whom Poe dedicated this poem, there is little doubt that he had his young wife, Virginia, in mind to a large degree. Virginia and Poe wed when she was barely fourteen years old, and she died of tuberculosis in her early twenties. The Poes entertained many friends—older women than Virginia among them—through their marriage, but Poe seemed to have truly loved his young bride, and as the reader absorbs “Annabel Lee,” their sad story must come to mind despite the debate of other female friends of Edgar’s.

The story of the “beautiful Annabel Lee” draws from the many Romeo and Juliet tales: young lovers separated by families, yet their love cannot easily be severed, even by death. Two young lovers who lived in a “kingdom by the sea” fall in love. However, not only her family finds this problematic, but also so does heaven: “A love that the winged seraphs of heaven / Coveted her and me.” Annabel Lee’s family shut her up in a sepulcher, and the angels send chilling winds. Key lines in the poem bring young Virginia Poe to mind: “I was a child and she was a child,” and “That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.”

The young lover, though, cannot stay away from his love, despite death, and he goes and their souls are united as he sleeps beside her “in her tomb” by the sea. Poe uses his macabre imagination here as he actually has the two young lovers lie together on the deathbed, an action straight from one of his stories. In the final stanza, he makes certain the setting becomes central once more: “In her tomb by the sounding sea.” Like “To Helen,” this poem is a love poem, but it is a Poe poem. While “To Helen” might appear in Byron’s work or Shelley’s or any of the Romance writers of the time, “Annabel Lee” shouts “POE!” The earmarks lie in the extremes: the lovers’ enemies are not just the family, but heaven itself; the family does not simply separate the lovers, they place Annabel Lee in a sepulcher; the young bereft lover does not simple visit the tomb, he lies beside the corpse of his Annabel Lee.

Poe’s rhyme in “Annabel Lee” is nearly hypnotic ababca / abcbdb / abcbdbeb / abcbdb / abbabcb / abcbddbb, each verse slightly different, which is not like most of Poe’s rhymes, yet the rhymes suit the verses in which they occur. The same can be said of the rhythm, for instance, in stanza two, he makes the rhythm emphasize the key to the poem: “But we loved with a love that was more than love—.” Thus one of his most famous poems, while a love poem, presents some of the themes that make Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry unique: setting and lost love and macabre sensations.

In “The Bells,” Poe uses a technique that often works in his short stories: that of layering. He begins with a simple idea, a rather light topic, then, with vocabulary, and edging forward bit-by-bit, he ends with a far heavier, even fearful idea. The readers have no inkling to begin with they are being lead away from a frivolous sensation to the logical movement if the mood shifts downward. Poe uses onomatopoeia, words that imitate sound, in this poem in a way that reminds the reader of “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Beginning with the delicate sense of Christmas bells, sleigh bells, the “world of merriment,” Poe gently sprinkles the air with the sound of tiny bells, barely heard, bells that just hang on the edge of consciousness, and does it with aaabcddceeaaa with the internal rhyme in the final rhyme of “From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.”

Stanza two becomes a touch heavier because these bells, wedding bells, have a lasting meaning and, therefore, need a tiny bit more resonance—“harmony,” “molten-golden,” “liquid ditty floats,” and most important, these bells last—“On the Future!” The same rhyme scheme and the final internal rhyme works well in this stanza, yet in the final line, “chiming” suggests that Stanza three may become louder.

And it does: “Loud alarum bells,” bells of the fire trucks, bells that scream out danger, bells that alert people that they must be on guard. Poe’s vocabulary, always outstanding, is charged with urgency in this stanza, “scream out their affright,” “They can only shriek, shriek,” and in the final line, because of the cacophony, he rushes through and does not even try to use the internal rhyme, “In the clamor and the clamor of the bells!” The entire rhyme wavers all over the place in this stanza, mimicking the crazed fire fighting and life and death struggle that goes on, beating in a rhythm that makes the reader feel the need to rush to the end, just as the gushing hoses and water buckets fight the leaping flames. Poe’s style is impeccable in this stanza.

Stanza four faces the aftermath of the horror of a catastrophe, but in the way Poe must approach the terror and the ashes. Some must read these tolling bells as the death knolls of those who have been killed in Stanza three. These are iron bells with a “melancholy menace,” and their sounds are “rust within their throats.” But the turning point in this stanza is pure Poe: the people “They are neither man nor woman— / They are neither brute nor human— / They are Ghouls.” And he says the King of the ghouls rings the bells. He keeps time and the bells throb and sob “to the moaning and the groaning of the bells.” If readers care to make a story of the poem, they could blame the fire on the unhuman ghouls who ring the ungodly bells in the final stanza. Perhaps they found the happiness of the sleigh bells and the wedding bells more joy than their dead hearts could abide and therefore set fire to the people who seemed happy in the world, thus releasing the mirror image of happiness of the ghouls. For Poe says:

And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances and he yells.

If this interpretation seems a bit too extreme, just remember, one is dealing with Edgar Allan Poe. The alternative reading, seeing the death knells being rung by those in the various churches about the fire-wracked town and choosing to see them as ghouls is harsh. Trained bell ringers often weep as they pull the ropes that notify towns of great tragedy—quite different from the picture Poe paints in Stanza four.

“The City in the Sea” demonstrates Poe’s ability to visualize the unusual in verse. While he did not accept a traditional heaven and hell, he invented a unique view of hell that uses stylistic means to give it reality. Verse one, aabbcdcdee, personifies “Death” and places his city in the West. Verse two speaks of tall things—spires, pinnacles, domes, shines, turrets—yet, “Death looks gigantically down.” Poe’s alliteration works well, “The viol, the violet, and the vine.” Nothing “tempt the waters from the bed,” says Poe, but in the final verse, when there is finally a wave, the place that death had built is humbled somehow: “Down, down that town shall settle hence, / Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, / Shall do it reverence.” In this small poem, the reader must wonder—has Poe told a story? Does he think Death stores its captives and thinks them his and his alone—and then is defeated by Hell? Has he just painted a picture of Purgatory where Death keeps those awaiting Hell and he knows what the water means? Is it an oxymoron that Hell comes in the form of water? Poe tantalizes in this little treasure.

“Ulalume” stands as another setting and picture poem that represents the sort of poetry Poe’s readers do not forget. This odd piece of poetry uses unusual vocabulary that defies definition in places and seems just to work for the sense and feel of the place and story. For “Ulalume” is one of Poe’s sad story poems. He describes in detail the place he and a companion, Psyche, wander. The dark lake, skies that are overcast, gray, leaves that are “crisped and sere— / The leaves they were withering and sere,” and it is October. The narrator mentions the months a number of times and describes the sort of late October from New England. The setting of this poem mixes images from classical River Lethe, from volcanic flowing rivers, from icy polar caps. “The tarn of Auber” reminds the readers of the tarn outside The House of Usher, dark and dank. The description of the night sky of the moon and the stars continue the otherworldly sense of the place, and his companion adds to this by pointing out that the place and the sky “I strangely mistrust.” Yet the narrator feels a sensation of dreaming and in stanza seven’s abbabbababa speaking of the dreaming moves into his pacification of Psyche—a true mistake, for he ends up kissing a corpse: “‘Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!” And he remembers that it is October and that his love had died that very night last year.

“Ulalume” strives at complexity and achieves it in the style Poe uses. His vocabulary: “Auber,” “Weir,” “scoriac,” “Yaanek,” “senescent,” “Lethean,” “Sibyllic,” in some cases invented, weir and auber for their musical sound, and Ulalume itself may have come from the Latin ulalare “to wail.” He also makes the entire idea of the night sky complex as he and Psyche debate constellations and the places of stars. All of these are clues to the simple warning: it is October! October is more than simply the month in which Halloween falls. For this narrator, it is the month—it is the very day when he buried his beloved. Poe spreads the clues through the stylistic tools he uses, as well as the thematic thread of eerie setting, time of the year, and the narrator’s sadness. In the end, just as in his “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume” is a story poem. Poe leads his readers through a complex setting to a sudden and shocking ending—kissing a corpse, albeit the corpse of the woman he loved.

Lord George Byron is said to have woken up famous due to the release of one of his poems—and the same can be said of Edgar Allan Poe. “The Raven” appeared numerous times in various papers, but from the very first printing, the popularity of the piece cannot be denied. Is it the story of the mysterious black raven interrupting a man’s mourning? Is it the rhythmic verses that drive on from the opening line relentlessly until that final “nevermore”? Is it the ironic humor that no matter what question is raised the answer must be the same? Is it Poe’s amazing internal rhyme, the vivid setting of the poem? Whatever the answers to these questions, this poem undoubtedly draws students who proclaim, “I hate poetry!” to at least read it and remember it. Poe boldly combines his stylistic abilities with his favorite themes in this poem and creates a piece that is anthologized frequently and happily.

In “The Raven” more than in any other of Poe’s works, the driving rhythm is extremely important:

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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“‘T is some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

While the rhythm varies to allow for syllables that occur in unique words throughout the poem, the iambic rhythm never flags for very long, and this is absolutely necessary to accommodate the repetitive “nevermore.” While this rhythmic pattern can become trite, in this poem it suggests the sameness of the narrator’s days and evenings—it supports the sense that his sorrow and his mourning does not change from one day to the next. He is aware of this at some level, but not until the Raven arrives with its monotone replies and its constant rhythm, does he begin to hear the trap he has become sunk in.

Poe chooses the setting of a library for this poem. He himself, a literary man through and through, sought solace in books, yet he makes this library a gothic setting. He chooses a December evening—a month when the evenings are long and dark. The fireplace offers little comfort, in fact, “each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” The curtains, purple, rustle like silk, and there is nothing but darkness outside the door of the library. This library has those insets in which busts of authors repose, and the chairs have violet, velvet linings. What light remained in the room came from a lamp—the sort of lamp that could cast shadows and yet also make the raven’s feathers glint.

Poe uses internal rhyme in this poem in a way that echoes the Raven’s repetitive answers: “But the fact is I was napping and so gently you came rapping”; “But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token”; “For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being.” This works quite well in a poem that uses rhyme so unusually. He relies on rhyming with “Nevermore” as the primary rhyme, and the other words within a verse serve to set the story forward.

The uncanny raven says but one word: “nevermore.” The narrator carries out a dialogue that becomes grimmer and grimmer, because until the bird arrives, he has some hope that he will find ease from his sorrow in books at least. As he speculates aloud, though, with each idea, the bird says, “Nevermore.”

Will I learn to forget Lenore? “Nevermore.”
Will I find a Balm in Gilead? (an easement of pain from God) “Nevermore”
Will we be joined in Heaven someday? “Nevermore.”
Leave me alone! Go! Go! “Nevermore.”
And the bird is still there—will I ever be free of it? “nevermore!”

The irony is, of course, the bird has not a clue as to what its three syllables mean. It merely mimics what it has been taught. The narrator knows this, yet his fears lie with the morose reply. He’ll never be free of the clutch of pain and sadness, yet he has made this choice.

“The Raven” demonstrates the author’s ability to use his particular style and thematic tools distinctively and in such ways that makes his poetry, like his other literature, uniquely Poe.