A few words about the author Edgar Allan Poe:

Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19 1809, he was a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a critical art and an American editor. He was a key person in the American romanticism. Most of his books belong to science fiction or fantastic genre. He was considered has the detective novel creator. His first novel was The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket has been a failure, then came January 1845 and Poe published the Raven that was an immediate success. Poe's wife died two years after the success of the Raven he then considered to remarry but died at the age of 40 in Baltimore.

 

A short summary of the Raven's plot:

 

The narrator was taking a nap trying to forget Lenore's dead.  Suddenly the door knocked which scared him. He tried to calm down convincing himself it was just a visitor and nothing else. He apologized not to hear the door. He opened the door but nobody was there. He tried to call Lenore his “beloved” but no one answered. Coming back to his room he heard noises coming from his window so he decided to open it. A majestic raven came out of his it.

 

Why can we say this is a gothic story?

 

-       The setting: the scene takes place in narrator's room, the night is quite lugubrious, it's December time.

 

-       Narrator's description: The narrator seems to be a caring person, fearful and curious. He’s also sad because his love died recently. Since he has a Pallas's bust we can suppose he is interested in the mythology. There is no physical description of the narrator.

 

-       Story ambiance: the narrator immediately sets the ambiance by telling us this is a lugubrious December night. We can also feel he is scared as his wife just died and this might lead us thinking of a ghost story at first.

 

-       Evolution of the terror: There is a growing feeling of terror when he hesitated to open the door. He thought Lenore was coming back from the dead. When he came back to his room the feeling of terror was growing up. His fright suddenly vanished when he opened the window and noticed the sound was just a raven trying to get in his place. The terror’s mood turned progressively into an angry mood because of the raven keeping on saying “never again” the narrator thought the bird was a demon.

 

-       The notion of imaginary in the book The imaginary in this story have an important place although the way it is written makes it completely credible. We have in the one hand the raven talking and repeating “not anymore” and on the other hand the narrator who thinks he heard his wife returning from the dead. With these things we can see that imaginary is the pillar of the story.