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In "The Raven," what does the narrator expect when he opens his chamber door?

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The poem's narrator at first believes a visitor is rapping at his door. He is frightened because he has been reading a book of quaint lore in a mostly darkened room where the embers of the fire are fading. He both fears and desires the visitor might be the ghost of his beloved Lenore. When he opens the door, he expects to find a human being but half wishes and half dreads to see a ghost. However, nobody is there.

The narrator goes back to his reading and hears the tapping sound again. He decides this time that it must be a shutter flapping in the wind, so he opens his purple curtains and then the shutter. A bird, the raven, flies in and settles on the head of his bust of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. It is the raven who has been tapping to get in.

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The speaker expects to find a visitor there. He had been reading to take his mind off his sorrow at losing his love Lenore, and had fallen asleep. Initially, when he hears the noise, "as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door" (Stanza 1), he is startled, but he calms himself by repeating the most logical explanation for the noise to himself. Surely, "'tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door (Stanza 3).

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In "The Raven," what does the narrator expect to find when he opens the door?

When he hears a "rapping, rapping" at his chamber door, the narrator says he thinks it is "nothing more" than a visitor. However, as he stands in his room listening to what he calls "the fantastic terrors," such as the rustling of his curtains, he begins to feel afraid. The second time he says it is nothing more than a visitor, he sounds like he is trying to convince himself that there is nothing behind the door that can hurt him. He doesn't say what he expects, but when he opens the door to reveal nothing but darkness, he calls out the name "Lenore"—the woman whose death the narrator seems to be mourning.

Later in the poem, the narrator asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in heaven.

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In "The Raven," what does the narrator expect to find when he opens the door?

I wonder if you are having trouble with this because it does not actually say what the narrator expects at the moment he opens the door.  It says earlier what he expects.

In the 4th stanza, the narrator opens the door but sees only darkness.  So what was he expecting?

First, look at the fact that he's talking as he opens it -- speaking to "Sir ... or Madam."  So he's expecting a person.

Earlier in the poem, starting with the first stanza, we see that the narrator thinks that it must be some late-night visitor.

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