The Raven, Egdar Allen Poe

keenobserver

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What does the saying nevermore mean in the poem I did some research online but I can't seem to find a clear answer.

Essentially it is to underline the loneliness of the narrator, usually considered to be a student lamenting a lost love. The bird sits on a bust of the titan Pallas, a warrior who died in his youth at his peak, when it enters the room and only says 'nevermore' to all the questions the student asks, looking for answers about his lost love and his melancholy. The student seizes on the 'fact' that the bird can speak, so assumes it knows the answers to his pain, but the bird only knows one word - 'nevermore' - which rhymes with the name of the lost love, Lenore. The student is mad with grief and so his interactions with the bird are hallucinations - which as Poe well knew did not always make sense of clarify anything. The 'nevermore' is at best a message to the grieving or mad student that his dreams and possibly his best life, like Pallas have ended with Lenore. He does not answer a specific question he's asked by the student, he's just telling him he's fucked - period, nothing will ever matter to him or make him feel love, passion or purpose again.

Despite this Baltimore named its pro football team after this bird. Go figure.
 

Motion-of-the-Ocean

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I've found many of Poe's stories to serve more as something one must read between the lines rather than taking the obvious conclusion as literal. It was actually years before I realized in one of my favorite stories, "A Tell-Tale Heart" that the obsessive sound the narrator experienced was of his own heart caused by the guilt of committing murder then an actual heart under the floor; an initial belief that gave really creeped me out when I first read it as a kid.

Then again, I think a lot of the obsolete 19th century language can create confusion as it also took me a time to realize when the narrator says he "ejaculated" it meant he uttered a sudden exclamation and not that he actually busted a nut.
 
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ronin001

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Re - read he poem, this time turn off the TV. Think of the Raven not as a bird that talks, like a Parrot; but a black / dark - symbol / messenger , there to deliver one and only one message


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