a bust of the Greek goddess of wisdom. Is the bird wise, and are his answers meaningful? Or is his lack of intelligence juxtaposed with the intelligence represented by the goddess?

At one point, the narrator claims that the raven was sent by God to distract him from his sorrow. At another, he wants to know if the raven can tell him of some silver lining in death, some way that he might, once again, see Lenore. At still another, he calls the raven a "devil" and insists that the bird has only come to torture him. Ultimately, the narrator says that his "soul from out that [raven's] shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted –– nevermore!" He feels that he will never again exist without the raven's presence and influence over him. A good literary analysis would need to address the raven's symbolism: what IS he? Is he just a bird, about which the narrator merely speculates? Or, is he actually sentient and there to help or hurt the narrator?

To write a critical analysis of “The Raven” or any other poem, you need to find a place to focus.  Some good areas to start are theme and literary devices.

The theme of a poem is the meaning the poet wants to impart.  There are different interpretations of poems, but in general the reader should find identify themes of dealing with loss, love, and isolation.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought
          to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for
          the lost Lenore—

You can find these themes in the discussion of the speaker’s feelings of sadness, and the description of his feelings of loss and frustration.  He sits up alone, trying to distract himself with study.

Another important element of literary analysis of a poem is identification of literary devices used in the poem.  Mood is an important element of the poem, because it helps to establish the theme.  The words “sorrow” and “dreary” are some of the ones used to establish the mood of lonliness.  This mood is also established by repetition, another literary device where phrases are repeated for effect.

“The Raven,” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, was first published in the Evening Mirror in January 1845. It is a narrative poem and one of the best-known works written by Poe, a dark Romantic writer. It touches upon several key themes, such as lost love, self-destruction, and the search for meaning.

The poem is written as a narrative told by a man sitting in his room “once upon a midnight” in “bleak December.” He hears a tap on his door and is startled by the movement of the curtain in front of the window. He closes the window and moves to answer the door, only to find “Darkness there and nothing more.” When he hears a second tap on the window, he opens the shutter and a raven flies inside. The bird perches itself on a bust of the Greek goddess Pallas Athena.

The speaker asks about the raven’s name and is surprised to hear the bird answer, “Nevermore.” The man keeps asking questions but is only met with the same answer. Although he knows that the answer is a mere “stock and store,” the speaker keeps questioning the raven. He wants answers about his lost love, Lenore, about his misery, and about the end of suffering. As the raven only says one word, the speaker becomes increasingly distraught. He concludes that his soul is eternally trapped inside “that shadow that lies floating on the floor.”

The poem is filled with several symbols, which add up to build a complex meaning. The time of the story is symbolic, as both midnight and December refer to endings and new beginnings. The questions that the speaker asks are simple in the beginning, but they become more complex. They reveal his tormented soul: he wants to forget about his lost love, but he also misses Lenore and wants to dwell in her memory. As he asks these questions, he grows angrier and comes to perceive the raven as evil. At the end of the poem, the shadow that entraps the soul of the speaker becomes a metaphor for his madness.