The Raven

[Smooth Operator]

Hello im new here and im sure this question has been asked before or if there is one answer to it but in the last lines of the Raven,

"And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadows on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!"

Does this meen that he will always feel sorrow over the loss of Lenore? or is there no real answer? could someone please analyze this for me

[Quoth-the-Raven]

There is no "real" answer to your question in so far as the poem is open to interpretation. You have quoted the last stanza from "The Raven", and the way you read the last stanza depends, of course, on how you interpret the rest of the poem.

I think two observations can be made about the stanza that will be important regardless of what you take the poem to be about: first, the last stanza, unlike the rest of the poem, is written in present tense. The narrator began in the past tense "Once upon a midnight dreadry, while I pondered, weak and weary" etc. That means that whatever has happened to him in the course of that night, he is still affected by it. Presumably, whatever "it" is will also linger with him in the future and, indeed, forever. Secondly, the "it" is something bad. His soul is caught in a "shadow", in darkness, which does not bode well for the narrator.

Now the question is: what does the shadow represent? You're spot on with your idea that the shadow symbolises the sorrow over the loss of Lenore and that the narrator will never be able to rid himself of the painful memory of that loss: Poe himself wrote in "Philosophy of Composition" that the raven (and hence his shadow) is "emblematical of Never-Ending and Mournful Remembrance". We don't necessarily need to read the poem the same way Poe did (or how he pretends to read it in "Philosophy of Composition"), but it's certainly a plausible explanation for the meaning of the last stanza. Again, your interpretation of the last stanza depends on how you interpret the rest of the poem.

Regards,

Raven.

For more information on "The Raven", have a look at my website: homepage.hispeed.ch/retus/raven.htm

[Smooth Operator]

thanks a lot, thats all i needed