Since the speaker of the poem appears to be wallowing in solitude and grief, it's a good idea to look for glimmers of hope in his thoughts and speech to see what it is he might want--aside from all that weary rumination in his lonely, spooky apartment!
When do his thoughts or his spoken words allude to something brighter, like Heaven or the Garden of Eden? Probably here, in the middle of the sixteenth stanza:
"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—"
"Aidenn" means "paradise" and comes from the word "Eden" (from Hebrew). Notice how "Aidenn" and "Eden" sound fairly alike?
The speaker seems to be asking the raven if he'll ever hold his lost love again, perhaps in the afterlife or in some "distant" paradise. So now we understand that the speaker wants his grief over his dead lover to be relieved somewhat with the hope of someday seeing her again.
The raven's answer is no ("nevermore,") which makes the speaker really upset. He yells at the bird to get out. Of course, we readers also find it a little funny, because we assume that "nevermore" is the only word the bird can speak and that he's just saying it over and over without even understanding that the man is asking him anything. The raven isn't really possessed of otherworldly knowledge, and he isn't really telling the man with any authority that, no, he won't see his dead lover again someday in a distant paradise. He's just up there squawking the only noise he knows how to make.
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