Poe"s famous poem, "The Raven," to most readers is a straightforward yet haunting, chilling tale of the loss of someone loved, and the troubling emotions and inner sensations that go along with a loss, no matter how the loss occurred. In this case, the "rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore." is the one lost. Why did an angel name Lenore, one has to wonder? Is there something associated with death or the afterlife in this image?.

             In fact Poe builds up the beauty of "lost Lenore" in sharp contrast to him saying that it was a "bleak December," and "each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor" and adds that when he awoke from his nap, and looked out his chamber door, there was only darkness "and nothing more.".

             So the poet is giving a narrator"s identity as a person who hears a tapping first, then sees nothing but darkness, and hears an eerie echo of his own voice saying "Lenore!" The reader knows that the narrator is kind of weird, when a raven, a symbol of a scavenger and death makes him happy ("this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling"), but later in the poem the bird is a "thing of evil.if bird or devil!" .

             The narrator is obviously troubled, and maybe delirious, over the loss of his loved one. And how did she die? Did the narrator have anything to do with her death – and now, the raven is coming to extract guilt from the narrator? This is a possibility, but it could also be that Poe just wanted to keep the reader off-guard, and not give the obvious answer as to what the poem is trying to say.

             All the raven ever says is "nevermore," even though he is asked several questions. Is that what the raven"s previous owner taught him to say? Was that the raven"s name ("we cannot help but agreeing that no living human being.with such a name as "Nevermore.