Poe’s Eerie Dreary
Edgar Allen Poe’s use of diction and imagery help establish an eerie mood throughout his poem,
“The Raven.” Poe repeatedly uses dark adjectives and verbs when describing the raven as “...this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling by the grave and stern decorum...ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore...” (2). In just a couple of lines, he uses seven strong dark and morbid words to reflect the mood of the poem. Poe chose words such as “beguiling” and “ghastly”, which clearly express the eerie mood he was trying to create. Poe’s impression of the raven when he states “what this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore meant in croaking ‘Nevermore’....to the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned...” (2 & 3), uses both sight and sound imagery to further demonstrate the mysterious mood. The reader can easily imagine the terrible sight and croak of the raven created by Poe’s deliberate choice of words. Poe’s powerful language clearly depicts the raven’s evil character. Diction and imagery closely intertwine to draw the reader in to Poe’s eerie mood in the poem.
Another device Poe uses to create the eerie mood is symbolism. Poe begs the bird“...’thing of evil! ­ prophet still, if bird or devil!...take thy beak from out my heart...and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming” (3). Even the title of the poem ­ “The Raven” ­ is crucial to Poe’s symbolism and defines the mood is he trying to create. Black as a color is