ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of indigent actors. Poe's father had deserted the family earlier, so at age three, when his mother died, Poe was taken in by John Allan, a merchant from Richmond, Virginia. He attended a private school in England, where he lived with the Allans between 1815 and 1820. After returning to America, he continued private schooling until 1826, when he entered the University of Virginia. However, he was forced to leave after less than a year because of gambling debts which John Allan refused to pay.

After quarreling with his guardian, Poe went to Boston where, under an assumed name, he joined the army. A few months later, at the age of eighteen, his first collection of poems, privately financed, was published. In 1829, after the death of John Allan's wife, Poe was discharged from the army. He reconciled with his guardian, and received an appointment to West Point. However, because Allan would not support him adequately, including more heavy debts (and because he did not like military life) he purposely neglected his duties to get himself dismissed from the academy.

Poe then went to Baltimore, where he resided with his impoverished aunt and her young daughter, Virginia. In 1832 he began his career as a writer of bizarre and romantic short stories by publishing 'Metzengerstein,' a tale about feuding families and supernatural revenge. However, his first real success came the following year when his 'MS. Found in a Bottle,' an eerie tale about a shipwreck and ghostly seamen, won a $50 prize from a Baltimore newspaper. More importantly, it won him recognition and led to a position as an editor on a monthly magazine published in Richmond.

In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia, who was not quite fourteen years old at the time, and in 1837, after the end of his editorship, he and his child-bride and her mother moved to Philadelphia. Poe soon published the only novel-length fiction he ever wrote, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a rambling adventure yarn filled with mutiny at sea, shipwreck, cannibalism, fierce South Sea natives, and a voyage to the South Pole.

Between 1838 and 1849, the year he died, Poe was at the center of magazine publishing in America, serving as the editor of several journals and writing reviews, critical articles, stories, and miscellaneous pieces which won him admiration for his critical acumen. His most famous works—including gothic horror stories such as 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and 'Ligeia,' detective stories such as 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and 'The Purloined Letter,' and tales of obsession such as 'The Black Cat' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'—all were published during this period. He also earned great fame and wide acclaim in Europe with poems such as 'The Raven.'

For all this renown, however, Poe waged a constant struggle for money. To add to his distress, in 1847 his young wife developed tuberculosis and died, leaving Poe almost insane with grief. In early October 1849, while on a trip from Richmond to New York, Poe stopped in Baltimore and began drinking, a habit for which he had absolutely no tolerance. On October 3, election day, he was discovered near a polling place in a coma. He died on October 7, 1849, reportedly of delirium tremens.

II

OVERVIEW

As usual with Poe's poetry, and in accord with his theory, 'The Raven' is not a long poem. In its 108 lines, however, are packed a great deal of emotion and literary skill. It can be read on one level for Poe's impressive choice of words and striking figures of speech. On another level, it can be appreciated for the story contained in the text—the true nature of the brief narrative can be understood fully only through careful study. The text of the 'The Raven' provides a lesson on the structure of Romantic verse.

III

SETTING

The action of the poem takes place in the study of a young man who is pondering 'Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.' Thus, the poet both sets the scene and prepares the somber and uneasy mood of events to come. The room is described in some detail, most of it lush and romantic, from the shadows caused as 'each dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor' to the 'silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain.' The principal object in the room is the bust of Pallas placed 'just above my chamber door,' upon which the raven perches.

IV

THEMES AND CHARACTERS

As Poe proclaims in 'The Philosophy of Composition,' the aim of his poem was to elevate the soul, a goal that could best be reached by the presentation of 'Beauty.' For Poe, Beauty is most readily perceived in a mood of sadness, and the most mournful event that the artist could conceive was 'the death of a beautiful woman' (an incident that he believed was 'the most poetical topic in the world'). So, a sense of loss, with no hope of ever again seeing the beloved is the real topic of the poem.

To address this topic, only two characters are needed—one of them the mourning lover and the other a grimly symbolic bird, an omen of evil. Poe carefully selected a raven for two sensible reasons: the bird suggests melancholy associations; and sometimes such a creature can utter a few syllables. In this case, the syllables are cleverly chosen by the poet: 'Nevermore.' It is important to note that the meaning of this one word, which is repeated throughout the poem, depends on the questions posed by the melancholy student.

As the stanzas advance, the student loses his initial surprise at the appearance of the raven, and each question becomes more serious and portentous. Thus, the entire poem can be seen as a vision of the unhappy flow of tragic emotions and hopeless thoughts in the mind and heart of the student. The bird may be taken as merely a device by which the young man reflects on his loss and penetrates more deeply into his own suffering.

V

LITERARY QUALITIES

Probably the first aspect of 'The Raven' to strike most readers is the phonetic devices employed by the poet to achieve what he calls 'sonorous' effects. Certainly, these devices make the lines memorable. Few readers can forget the internal rhymes and alliterations of the opening lines: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary/ Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—/ While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping/ As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

The general rhyme scheme of the poem was devised so as to provide plenty of rhymes for the key syllable: 'ore,' found both in the name of the lost love, Lenore, and the bird's constant 'Nevermore.'

These sound patterns persist throughout the text with occasional variations, as in 'On this home by Horror haunted' and 'thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!' At first, the student tries to interpret the bird as a source of humor. But his failure to do so helps establish the prevailing tone of the poem. As the mood of the poem darkens (exactly in the middle of the text, as Poe intended), the choice of words becomes intense and more extreme. The young man starts out by referring to his visitor as 'this ebony bird' but later calls it a 'fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core.' So, the diction of the poem reflects the growing misery in the heart of the unhappy lover.

In his essay, Poe makes much of the structure of the poem. His claim with regard to his careful selection of every feature of the construction makes a great deal of sense—especially considered in light of the final product. There are eighteen stanzas, each six lines long. The lines are of a length calculated to draw out the possibilities for internal rhyme and fully developed metaphors and other figures of speech. Most of the lines contain fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen syllables, making them of unusual length for a lyric poem. Such length is needed, however, to allow room for such a forceful passage as 'get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!'

The most important aspect of good poetry often proves to be those images and figures of speech that remain in the reader's mind to press home the central effect of the poem. One such stands out in the closing lines of 'The Raven.' As the young lover begins to realize that his position is completely desolate, he pleads with the now ghostly symbol of his despair, 'quit the bust above my door!/ Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' As always, the raven answers, 'Nevermore.'

Taken together, the poem's symmetry, phonetic qualities, figures of speech, and artful progression of psychological analysis (some readers have noted the accuracy of this vision of almost clinical depression) provide the reader with a moving experience.

VI

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Critics have suggested that, by taking the bird as such an omen and by reacting to it as he does, the student actually loses his chance of seeing the lost Lenore. Is this reading justified by the text?

2. Are there any violations of the prevailing rhyme scheme of the poem? Can a reason be found for the poet's allowing such aberrations?

3. Could the entire poem be interpreted as a nightmare in the mind of the young lover, who, it must be remembered, admits that he was nearly asleep at the start of the text? What evidence can be adduced to support such an interpretation?

4. Was Poe's choice of a raven as the force that would push the student to despair a wise one? Was it a better choice, for instance, than another person would have been?

5. Does the division of the poem into stanzas, each with its final refrain, advance the theme and impact of the poem? Would some other design have been more effective? Why or why not?

6. Do the 'sound effects' that appear throughout the text ever distract one's attention from the substance of the lines? Cite examples.

7. What are the three or four most striking figures of speech in the poem? How would each be categorized (metaphor, simile, and so on), and why is each so impressive?

8. Since much of the poem is quoted speech, do these passages seem too unrealistic, or do they sound like what such a person might say when in a frenzy of emotion?

VII

IDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS

1. Poe, as he often did, revised 'The Raven' for book publication. Research these changes. Do they improve the poem?

2. Poe was always fearful of plagiarists of his own work, but a number of scholars have pointed out that 'The Raven' was very strongly influenced by at least three authors; Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and an obscure American writer named Thomas Holly Chivers. Chivers was a friend of Poe's, but later claimed that Poe had plagiarized one of his poems in 'The Raven.' Does an examination of Chivers tend to indicate that Poe was guilty of plagiarism?

3. Most biographies of Poe note that he had a good education. Does a careful review of a couple of such studies, along with an attentive reading of some of his poems, support that view?

4. 'The Raven' contains several allusions of a clearly literary-cultural nature. Which ones are they, and how do they enhance the effect of the poem?

5. Poe's influence on foreign literature has often been observed. Does a study of some of the more prominent poems by such foreign masters as Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé reveal these influences?

6. Poe has been called the real initiator of the Symbolist movement in poetry in American literature. Research that movement and its central symbols. How does Poe's work compare with that of the Symbolists?

7. Does Poe's explanation in 'The Philosophy of Composition' of how he structured the lines of his poem (including verse forms and syllabic configurations) seem reasonable in view of his other poetry and his intended effects? Consider especially Poe's other major essay, 'The Poetic Principle.'

8. Could Poe have been thinking of the inevitable loss of his beloved wife when he wrote this poem? What evidence can be found in his poem and in his biography?

VIII

RELATED TITLES

Poe's 'The Philosophy of Composition' explains in detail how Poe created 'The Raven.' This essay, written the year after the poem was composed, sets forth a number of interesting principles of poetry to which Poe was devoted. Also, the short lament 'Lenore,' first written in 1831, expresses similar themes to those found in 'The Raven,' and the name of the dead girl is the same as that which Poe used in the later poem.

Contributed by: Fred B. McEwen, Waynesburg College

Source: Beacham’s Guide to Literature for Young Adults. Copyright by Gale Group, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Th Killing of Osama-an Eye-Wash by Obama

With the death of Osama Bin Laden--the arch enemy of America--the  curtain has been brought down on yet another chapter in the history of America's relentless crusade against terrorism . It is only an eye wash by Obama to win the next president election which is around the corner. To take the rein of the United States of America a second time, Obama has already laid out before his voters a slew of promises such as better living condition, new job opportunities and a drastic improvement in  economy which has been facing a set back ever since the recession. Though a man of  determination and an administrator par excellence ,Obama could not materialize the sweet dreams He shared with his fellow Americans. He had no doubt a tough time in the office of the president and in many matters he could not rise up to the expectations of the Americans who chose an Afro-American to lead them through right path.

Though a half-failure in putting into practice what he preached, Obama is still 'a guru' in reading the minds of his people. Promising them a bright future, Obama stoked up the fire of their enthusiasm ,and waging war against terrorism, he made them believe that they will be restored to a peaceful life. But when the election reached his door step, Obama ,to his shame , realized that he has nothing noteworthy to his credit. In this crucial situation, Obama put on the table his trump card--the Osama hunt, and he proved himself successful in that attempt. By spilling the blood of their inveterate enemy Laden, Obama has won back the confidence of his people.

Endosalfan-still a problem after a blanket ban on its use?

For quite a long time, the killer pesticide Endosalfan has been a matter of strong debate among people from various walks of life. The opposition and the ruling parties locked horn with each other on this issue many a time. After a slew of incidents which registered the plight of the victims and the might of political parties,finally there came a blanket ban the use of this mortal pesticide. But the problem never ends here, what we experience now is just a silence before a raging storm. Though Geneva Convention ended with a decision to ban Endosulfan in all developing countries, doubts with regard to an alternative for the pesticide still remain unresolved. It allows nations to go on with the use of Endosulfan as long as a new alternative is invented. in this special situation, can we call this 'ban' an effective one?. It is only an attempt to shut the mouths of the activists who are striving to bring to light the toll this slow poison has taken on the lives of the people living in and around the plantations where the pesticide is still being used.

The rehabilitation of the victims is yet another problem that looms large before us. It is a fact that none of the politicians in the country has the courage and confidence either to take a strong step against the manufactures of this poison or to provide the hapless victims with provisional help. V.S Achudanandan observed a fast as a mark of his support for the woebegone victims in Kasargod, LDF called for state-wide hartal, Youth Congress diplored the stance of UPA Govt. on this issue, but none met with success. I consider all these mere attempts to politicize the issue. Had they been really sympathetic towards the preys of Endosalfan, they would have taken a strong step to rehabilitate them, to impart them necessary medical facilities and to give financial aids. Dear politicians, don't take this ban on Endoslfan to your credit. It will never fall out of favor as long as a new killer replaces it.

Hi fireends,
This blog is to share with you my views and thoughts on literature. Today I present my reading of   Langston Hughes's poem "Cross"









My old man's a white old manAnd my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old manI take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

AnalysisCROSS
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Langston Hughes “Cross”, a poem in three stanzas of irregular rhyme, can be placed on equal plains with some of his renowned poems like “Ballad of the Landlord”. The poem explores the inner conflicts of a woebegone Afro-American born out of wedlock.
The title of the poem connotes three equally predominant meanings . First of all, the word ‘cross’which literally means hybrid connotes impurity of birth. Reminiscent of the crucifixion, the word 'cross'  also metaphorically denote both tolerance and punishment. In the poem which centers on the inner-clashes of a man born to a black mother and a white father, the three above stated connotations of the title stand as a pointer to the poem’s central theme. It is believed that the life of the man portrayed in the poem is impure, as he is the son of a couple belonging to two mutually opposing groups in history—the white and the black. As far as the poetic persona is concerned, living the life of a ‘cross’ is as painful as being nailed on a cross. Every time he is punished by the conviction of his mind that he is neither a black nor a white. Leading a life, bearing all these humiliations is, no doubt, a tolerance. Speaking metaphorically, the speaker is on a cross road and he dose not know which way he has to choose. So, it can be said for certain that the title throws a light into the central theme of the poem—identity crisis.
Observing from a formalistic point of view, the first line of the poem itself is an ambiguity-creating one. In the opening line, the speaker says “my old man is a white old man”. As far a common reader is concerned, it is very difficult to infer who the old man is. It is only when we go through the entire poem that we understand the man the speaker refers to is his father. It also exposes the speaker’s hatred towards his father. The poem opens with the speaker addressing his father “a white old man”. No son, who likes his father very much, can call his father ‘a white old man’. This is a pointer to the speaker’s lack of love for his father. Above all, the expression ‘white old man’ draws the attention of the readers to the identity of the speaker’s father. In the first line, the speaker’s tone is a bit harsh and coarse. But when it comes to the second line, while speaking about the mother, the speaker becomes tender and mild. He reveals that his mother is a black. When a close reading of these two lines is done, it gets very clear that the speaker hates his father as much as he loves his mother. The italicized expression ‘my old man’ in the first line stands out from all the other lines in the poem. This is a conscious poetic device by which the poet depicts the white old father’s superiority and predominance over the speaker and his mother. Indirectly, the poetic persona provides the readers with the idea that begetting a child cannot be considered the sole reason for being called father. If the speaker had a ting of love for his father, he would have called the latter ‘my father’, instead ‘my old man’. Above all, it is quite surprising to note that nowhere in the poem the speaker uses the word father. Whenever he wants to refer to his father, he uses the term ‘old man’.
In the poem, the speaker never hesitates to bear his soul so that he says he used to curse the ‘white old man who begot him’. But the father being considered mightier and superior than the black, the speaker used to retract the curses he poured on the father out of inexorable anger.

The speaker’s hatred towards his father can be taken as a ramification of his Oedipus complex. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, says every male child has an unconscious sexual desire for his mother and this desire is spiked with hatred towards the father. Now, for the poetic persona, father is a thorn in his flesh and he longs to get rid of him. In that sense, the speaker’s retract of the curses may be because he finds an alter ego of himself in his father. The black speaker’s hatred towards his white father can also be taken as a symbolic representation of the hatred of all the blacks towards the white colonial masters
In the second stanza, the speaker explores how much strong his emotional bound with his mother is. He says that if he ever wishes to curse his mother or thinks that if she were hell, he will feel a prick of consciousness for bearing that evil wish in mind. When we read between lines, it becomes very vivid that the kind of respect the speaker pretends to have for his father is out of fear, not out of strong filial love.
In the third stanza, the poem is brought to an end by presenting how far ‘the white old man’ is away from the speaker and his mother. Though the white man had shared bed with the black woman and begotten a child, he never led a conjugal life with her. The two expressions in the stanza are very important in eliciting this fact. They are ‘a fine big house’ and ‘a shack’. ‘A fine big house’ stands for the luxurious life the white father lived whereas ‘a shack’ for the out and out ignominious and miserable experiences the black mother went through. When the ‘white old man’ led a luxurious life in a palatial house, his wife was fighting against the fearful odds of life. The white breathed his last in ‘a fine big house, whereas the black mother in a shack.
Being a mortal, the speaker too will succumb to the mow of death. But he does not know whether his death is in a shack or in a fine big house. He is sure of one thing—he will be neither a black nor a white till he breathes his last. This statement of the speaker can be taken in two ways. The first connotation of the line is that the speaker is torn between two identities. The second meaning is that the speaker wants to become neither a black nor a white, but he wishes to be a good human being. The concluding line of the poem “I wonder where I’m goanna die/ Being neither white nor black?/ evokes a sense of tension in the minds of readers.
The use of colloquial level of language is another noteworthy formalistic feature of the poem. The speaker being an ordinary black, the ordinary language used in the poem very much suits to decorum.
The situation portrayed in the poem has some kind of similarities with the soliloquy of Edmund in William Shakespeare’s king Lear. In act one, scene two, Edmund the illegitimate son of Gloucester philosophizes over his bustardy. He calls himself ‘an honest madam’s issue’. But while speaking about the men who beget children in the short period between sleep and awake, Edmund becomes harsh and coarse.
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