Lack of Love

It was interesting how much the narrator in The Raven paralleled the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Two of the main themes throughout the poem are loneliness and isolation as well as lost love. The alienation the narrator is experiencing seems to jump through the page at the reader. While reading Poe’s biography I learned that he had married his significantly younger cousin Virginia and that she suffered and eventually died after living a life of ailing illnesses. This left Poe a broken man and leads right into the loneliness and depression that he may have felt. The narrator in The Raven has also lost a lover and is hanging onto life by the edge of his teeth. At first it seems as if the raven in the poem may have been sent from angles to save him from his despair, but later the narrator changes his mind and is convinced that the bird is from a darker side only there to remind him of the love that he has lost and will never regain.
One of the passages that I took a closer look at in regards to the lonely and lost feeling that the narrator is experiencing concerning Lenore states,
“Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow. From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore-For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore- Nameless here for evermore.”
This passage is important because it really shows the angst he is feeling and it also portrays a man desperate to fill the void that his lover has left him here on Earth. It is fascinating how the narrator seems to refer to Lenore as leaving him. It makes me think that he is almost mad that she left or that she is dead and in heaven with the angels. This parallels Poe’s life after Virginia passed away.
Another passage in the poem the narrator, again, refers to people leaving him and the assumption that the raven will also fly away soon. For example he says “other friends have flown before on the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.” This great feeling of solitude and lack of love in the narrator’s life may welcome the solidarity of life or he may be secretly happy to have the raven stay on his doorstep to for evermore remind him of the agony of losing Lenore.