Poem 'The Raven' Summary

                              The Poem

                                       THE  RAVEN

 Summery

"The Raven" opens on a frigid night in December. The speaker is a depleted understudy or researcher, resting as he peruses, when he hears an unexpected thumping at the entryway. He opens it, yet there is nobody there. Alarmed and progressively odd, he murmurs an inquiry: "Lenore?" The word is reverberated back to him.
Back in the chamber the speaker considers what this could mean. He hears the tapping once more, this time from the window. He figures it should be the breeze, yet rather a raven enters and roosts on a bust of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of astuteness and artistic expression.

At first the speaker observes seeing such a genuine bird entertaining. He comments on its strength this bird isn't "fearful," or a weakling, despite the fact that it appears to wear the shorn haircut of a shamed archaic knight. In playfully raised language (to match the raven's royal appearance), the speaker demands the bird's name. The raven answers, "Nevermore."
The speaker, falling once more into his melancholy, proposes the bird will presumably take off and leave him soon, very much like his expectations and companions. The raven answers "Nevermore" again, recommending this time that it won't ever leave the speaker's chamber.
The speaker is alarmed by how uncannily fitting the raven's reaction is. He attempts to support the experience: The raven doesn't have the foggiest idea what it's talking about, it's simply rehashing an expression it gained from a previous proprietor. In any case, the bird's blazing eyes agitate him. The velvet coating of the seat he's sitting in reminds him, abruptly, of his lost Lenore, and how she won't ever stay here with him again.

The speaker thinks he smells church incense, maybe swung by a holy messenger (a seraphim), and blames the raven for being sent by God to cause him to fail to remember Lenore. He looks at the bird to nepenthe, a medication of distraction originally referenced in Homer's Odyssey. Once more, the raven answers "Nevermore."

The speaker turns to blaming the raven for being sent by the Devil, or maybe showing up here by arbitrary possibility. Its abnormal certainty makes him keep thinking about whether it has some exceptional information to share. He references the Bible, Jeremiah 8:22, inquiring as to whether there is "salve in Gilead"; basically, he needs to know whether there is any expectation of alleviation from his distress. Again, the raven says "Nevermore," inferring this time that the speaker won't ever recuperate from the deficiency of Lenore.
Progressively frantic, the speaker inquires as to whether he will essentially meet Lenore in "Aidenn," a substitute spelling of Eden, which means paradise. Once more, the raven tells him "Nevermore." His distress changed to seethe, the speaker requests the bird return to "Night's Plutonian shore," or hellfire (Pluto is the Roman divine force of the Underworld, and "Plutonian shore" alludes to the Styx, a waterway there). The raven will not leave.
In the last refrain, the speaker shifts from the past tense to the present. The sonnet closes with an affirmation that the raven roosts still on the bust of Pallas over the speaker's chamber entryway.