Please read: Hope Nevermore
Excerpt:
I see the window and door as representations of the same event. The same call, the same tapping, draws the narrator to each. The consequences of the event comes from his decision of how to interpret, or deal, with his loss. Two contrary possibilities are presented by the narrator for how he should progress from his bereavement, reunion (The Raven 93-95) or total dissolution (The Raven 81-83, 89). Through the door was the possibility of reunion, an heaven of sorts, which he turns from as merely his own desire fooling him. However, the nepenthe, the Raven trained to cheaply reply “nevermore” (The Raven 62-66), is invited into his intellectual space when he rejects hope in the hereafter. Nevermore, the raven’s presumed name, fails to provide the contrary freedom from his mourning the narrator expected when giving up hope, for far from forgetting his love, he finds the bird damns him to perpetual desire with no hope of satisfaction.
Tale Told 