I had to break the raven down stanza by stanza for english. I got an A on it so it should help. Stanza 1 While sitting, reading a book, Poe begins to fall asleep but then he hears a knock on his door. "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door"�(line 3). Poe uses internal rhyme in line 1 - "dreary"æweary"�. He also uses it in line 3 "" "napping"æ tapping"�. The word "rapping"� is used twice in the fourth line. "As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door"�. This is an example of restatement. Alliteration is used in line 3 repeating the "n"� sound in the words "nearly"� and "napping"� "" "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping"æ"�. Poe did this to stress those words. Lore: knowledge, learning, information. Stanza 2 The setting of the poem is during a gloomy, depressing December and the trees' shadows are cast on Poe's floor.
Edgar Allan Poe Museum (Richmond, Virginia)
Edgar Allan Poe
Illustration by Édouard Manet for a French transl...The setting shows that Poe uses the literary technique of "Goth"�. The surroundings make Poe a little afraid and he wants the night to end and for the morning to come. "Eagerly I wished the morrow""vainly I had tried to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore"�(lines 9 "" 10). Poe begins to miss his wife Lenore and is reminded of her because everything around him is sort of deathly and depressing. The reader knows that Poe is thinking of death because instead of using the word shadow, he uses "ghost"� in line 8 and ghosts are usually associated with death. The reader also knows that that the events in the poem happened in the past because of the first line in stanza 2 when Poe...