Analysis of the structure, contrasts, and complex of the lost love in The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe´s The Raven "was the poem that finally made him popular as it popped up in a number of magazines and newspapers" (Shucard, 1990: 120). This may be so, among other things, because of the extraordinary usage of refrain, alliteration, assonance and the complex structure of this poem. In this term paper I am going to concentrate on the structure of the poem. First I will give a general overview of the structure and then will give a more detailed appreciation of the poem. I have chosen two contrasting aspects which I will analyze in more detail: the contrast in the course of the conversation between the raven and the speaker and the contrast between heaven and hell. Then I will make a short sidestep to discuss the credibility of the raven. This is necessary for the confirmation of some elements of the contrast between heaven and hell. Finally I will examine the elements of and the ideas presented by lost love. The individual elements of this poem can not be separated totally from each other, as these said elements often overlap. Sometimes, I feel that it is not possible to discuss something in full detail in one part of this work, as the same elements appear later again in another context, where the discussion can assume new and different aspects.