aunting of alcohol towards Poe. The raven patronizes Poe that he will never see his lost love again when uttering, “forget this lost Lenore” (Thompson, 83). Alcohol taunts Poe into never-ending depression and caused Poe to have a life-long problem with alcoholism, which led to his death. In a similar way that the alcohol explored Poe’s inner devastation, the raven gives a look into the narrator’s innermost fears that he will never see his Lenore again. In the first stanza, questioning from what direction the “tapping” came, he throws open the door, the narrators’ nemesis not to be found. In fact it was some other realm that must have been opened up about his lost love and the noise, which is driving him insane. The narrator then opens the shutter, which could be interpreted as opening his soul to the outside world. To his surprise, he discovers a raven, a “beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door” (Thompson, 53). The raven directs all further action in the poem, it ridicules and patronizes the narrator throughout the poem and its evil force creates a sense of suffering and anguish within the character. The climax of the poem is when the narrator faces his confused and disordered world and in the narrator’s madness he cries out, “Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!” (Thompson, 98). Poe’s use of symbolism was influential in making the literary reputation of “The Raven”. The raven is symbolized as the narrator's mournful and ceaseless remembrance of his lost love. The raven is important to the melancholic theme because it is often seen as being a bringer of death. Another symbol Poe used was the bust of Pallas, the Goddess of Wisdom. This is symbolic because it leads the narrator to believe that the raven speaks Page 5from wisdom. When Poe writes, “...distinctly I remember it was in the bleak Decemb...
