Thursday, October 20, 2016

What two questions does the narrator ask the raven towards the end of "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe?

The speaker in "The Raven" asks the bird if there's anything that will ease his heartache, and if there's any chance he'll see his lost love in the afterlife.


Let's check out the details of these two questions:


1. In the fourth-to-last stanza, the speaker asks the raven:



Is there- is there balm in Gilead?



What he means is, "Is there anything that will comfort my soul?" We know that the speaker is in a deep depression brought on by grief over the death of his love, Lenore, so by asking if there's balm in Gilead, he's asking if there's anything that will soothe his pain or offer relief from his profound sadness.


You'll notice that this is not a very specific question. (It's a reference to the Bible, in the book of Jeremiah, when someone originally spoke that question when demanding to know why the "daughter of his people" hadn't yet been healed.)


2. In the third-to-last stanza, the speaker gets more specific and asks the bird if there's a chance that he can see his beloved Lenore in the afterlife. In other words, he's asking if it's true that his soul and the soul of Lenore will once again be joined after death.


I suppose if you want to be very picky, you could say the speaker doesn't really ask a question but instead makes a demand for information in the form of "Tell me..."


Anyway, here's how he requests this final piece of information:



Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,


It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- 



Of course, the bird's answer is "no" ("nevermore") and it upsets the speaker so much that he yells and tries to get the bird to leave, but it won't.

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