Three Girls Walk into a Forest, and . . . .

Girl Eaten by a Tree by Mark Ryden

What strikes you about this picture? What is the first thing that draws your attention?

The girls? The situation? The setting? The action? The conflict? The girls' motives?

Who are these girls? What are their backgrounds? Why do they share the same facial features? What are they doing? What is the tree doing? What time of day is it? In what forest are they? Where are the girls going? Why are they in the forest? Why did the tree attack one of the girls? Why don't the two girls help the one who has been attacked?

Envision several answers for as many of these questions as you can; write them out, each in a complete sentence.

You can start a story with an answer to any of these questions, but each answer must be interrelated with the one before and after it so that a chain of incidents develops which is based on cause-effect relationships throughout.

Next, as Aristotle suggests in Poetics, arrange the incidents in a pattern organized by the story's beginning, middle, and end. (Edgar Allan Poe gave good advice when he said to know the story's ending before you begin writing.)

Stories are hard to plot because, although they seem simple, they are, in fact, complex: all the parts (answers to the questions of who?, what?, when?, where?, how”, why”, and how many? or how much?, are interrelated. By identifying causes and effects among the incidents, they appear logically connected, unified, and coherent.

Let's try the exercise.

For me, the situation captures my immediate attention. Perhaps the painting's artist, Mark Ryden, anticipated that the situation would be most prominent, as he named the work Girl Eaten by a Tree.

Initially, therefore, maybe I should focus my attention on the situation: a girl being eaten by a tree.

Who is the girl? The sameness of the facial features and the similarities in the dress of the two sisters watching the third girl being eaten by the tree suggests that the two girls are sisters. Although we can't see the third girl's face, her clothing is similar to that of the other two girls, which could suggest that she is their sister; possibly, her appearance is identical to theirs—a triplet. For now, that will be my interpretation: The three girls are triplets.

Notice how, starting with the situation, I veered off to a consideration of the painting's figures, the characters of the story? That's likely to happen, and it's fine: the elements of the story are, after all, interrelated; one question is apt to suggest the answer to another.

But back to the situation: why is the girl being eaten by a tree? Perhaps she insulted the tree, and it is eating her to avenge itself. Maybe she happened to be walking closest to the tree, and the tree snatched her up because it is hungry. It could be that the tree is a sentinel, guarding the forest, and it is eating the girl because the tree perceived her (and possibly her sisters) as being in some way a threat. It's also possible that the two girls who are watching their sister being eaten by a tree are only imagining the situation. Maybe they discussed a scene in a fantasy in which a tree devoured one—or all—of them and the memory of this earlier conversation inspired one of the girls to imagine it happening as the sisters walk through the forest.

For now, I am going to say that the girl in the yellow dress is imagining the situation. Why? We'll come back to this question in a moment, as we envision the girls' background.

Why are they in the forest? They are taking a shortcut. From where to where? From their house to Grandma's house (allusions can exp[and the theme of a story; this one may even have suggested an ending to the story!)

Obviously, it's daytime, but the sky seems overcast; it is gray. Rain seems to be on its way: there's a storm coming, it seems, and it may be an emotional as well as a meteorological storm. (Symbolism is often highly effective in a narrative.)

Apart from the tree's grasping and devouring of the girl in blue, there is no overt action, other than the girl in the yellow dress's touching the shoulder of the girl in the pink dress while holding up her other hand, as if to ward off the tree, and the girl in the pink dress's folding her hands together, as if she is making a silent plea.

Why aren't the other girls helping the victim? Especially if they are sisters—and triplets, at that—one would expect that the other two would be seeking to free their sister from her attacker. Perhaps they are frozen with fear? Their shocked expressions suggest that thy may be. In addition, their hair (not a single one of which is out of place), their pressed dresses, the ribbons restraining their hair, and the attitudes they have adopted suggest that these girls are unaccustomed to the violence they've encountered. Not only are they terrified, but they are also at a loss to know how to react. They are helpless. Al they do, probably instinctively, is to watch, as one wards off the tree and the other pleads silently for deliverance.

And, now, what about the story's ending? The allusion to Little Red Riding Hood (the girls were going to Grandma's house when the tee attacked one of them) suggests that a hero will appear, rescue the girl, and, perhaps, chop down the tree (or, at least, the limbs with which it holds the girl). Obviously, the scene Ryden has depicted is fantastic, so the appearance of a woodsman fits the genre well.

Now, we need only break the story into its three divisions, beginning, middle, and end. (Notice that we have figured out our ending before writing the story.) In doing so, we can insert words that indicate CAUSE and EFFECT.

Beginning

On an overcast morning, BECAUSE they plan to spend the day with their Grandmother, three young girls, triplets, who are dressed in similar dresses, bows, socks, and shoes, travel together through a forest, BECAUSE it is a shortcut, chattering about their plans and about the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

Middle

BECAUSE the tree is hungry, it snatches one of the girls. (The tree has human features—eyes, nose, mouth, and arms—and characteristics—it is hungry, predatory, and conscious.) BECAUSE they are shocked and frightened by the tree's attack, the other girls, feeling helpless, look on in horror, BECAUSE they do not know what to do and are paralyzed with fear.

End

BECAUSE a woodsman, happening to be in the area, chances upon the scene, he cuts off the limbs (arms) of the tree, freeing the girl, who has not come to harm. The girls are unable to thank him BECAUSE he is gone before they can do so. The girl in yellow finds that she holds the woodsman's ax BECAUSE, as she realizes, it was she who vanquished the tree. She took strength from imagining herself to be a woodsman BECAUSE doing so made her feel strong and gave her courage. She thought of herself as a woodsman, she thinks, BECAUSE her talk with her sisters made her think of him when her sister was endangered. In fact, their talk and the creepy forest CAUSED her to imagine the whole incident—her sister was never attacked, except in her own mind. But, now, BECAUSE she has learned of her own strength and courage, the girl needs no surrogate hero: she herself is strong, courageous, and heroic.

Although this seems a simple story, whether it is or is not depends on how the story is written. Possibly, a writer could make profound statements about such matters as gender roles, sisterhood, fantasy as a means of personal empowerment, self-discovery, and self-realization. Before writing such a story, an author might do well to read Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment.

Although Bettelheim's scholarship has been tarnished by allegations of his misrepresentation of his credentials, by plagiarism, by abusive behavior toward his students, and other issues, his study of the therapeutic potential of fantastic literature is stimulating, indeed, and may suggest psychological and social directions for a narrative about a girl in a forest who imagines an assault upon her sister, especially when her sister, a triplet, is identical in appearance to herself.

Edgar Allan Poe's "King Pest": Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 202 by Gary L. Pullman

King Edward III

The first sentence of the story establishes its setting: it is “about twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, . . . during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward.”

Edward III ruled from January 25, 1327 to June 21, 1377—about fifty years. From 1361 to 1362, there was a resurgence of the cholera pandemic, so it is on an October night during this two-year period that “King Pest” takes place. (Others suggest that the story's title alludes not to the cholera pandemic but to the bubonic plague, or Black Death.)

As in most of Poe's fiction, the story begins with the general, a night during the reign of King Edward III, and moves to the specific, “two seamen belonging to the crew of the 'Free and Easy,' a trading schooner,” as readers learn that these sailors, Legs and Hugh Tarpaulin, have gone ashore to drink; they are “much astonished to find themselves seated in the tap-room of an ale-house in the parish of St. Andrews, London.”

Poe takes pains to describe both men. Legs is taller than his companion, standing “six feet and a half.” He has “an habitual stoop in the shoulders,” and he is “exceedingly thin.” He has “high cheek-bones, a large hawk-nose, retreating chin, fallen under-jaw, and huge protruding white eyes.” “Solemn,” he is not given to laughter.

Tarpaulin is his opposite, short (four feet) and “squat,” with “stumpy bow-legs . . . unusually short and thick arms”; finny fingers; “small eyes, of no particular color”; a nose which is “buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face”; and “thick” lips that he licks frequently. Tarpaulin regards Legs with “a feeling half-wondrous, half-quizzical.”

Penniless, the drunken sailors flee after seeing a sign forbidding credit, the tavern's landlady in pursuit.

(In England, pubs lower rents to the owners of the buildings their establishments occupy, but, in return, the owners of the pubs pay more for ale and other alcoholic beverages supplied by vendors.)

Parts of London that are infected by the plague are sealed off, the king having imposed a death sentence upon whoever bypasses barriers to rob from stores inside these restricted areas. In fleeing the tavern, Legs and Tarpaulin run down an alley, the end of which is blocked by a barrier, which indicates the presence, ahead, of the plague. To escape the pursuing landlady, the sailors climb the barricade and jump into the street on the other side of it, where a scene of horror meets their drunken gazes:

Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. The air was cold and misty. The paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed;—and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.

From inside “an undertaker's shop,” the seamen hear laughter, “shrieks,” and “curses.” Entering the building, Legs and Tarpaulin see an open trapdoor, through which they observe a table bearing “various wines and cordials, together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and quality” and a “huge tub” of punch. Seated around this table, upon coffin-trestles, or stands for holding coffins, are King Pest, Queen Pest, and four members of their family, the Arch Duke Pest-Iferous,' the Duke Pest-Ilential,' the Duke Tem-Pest,' and the Arch Duchess Ana-Pest.

Poe takes equal pains in describing these characters as he has in painting the portraits of his protagonists. Each is a grotesque, with exaggerated traits, as the descriptions of the monarchs suggest, their descriptions being typical of the descriptions of the others as well:

King Pest:

Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the president of the table. His stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him a figure more emaciated than himself. His face was as yellow as saffron—but no feature excepting one alone, was sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a forehead so unusually and hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head. His mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. This gentleman was clothed from head to foot in a richly-embroidered black silk-velvet pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a Spanish cloak.—His head was stuck full of sable hearse-plumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thigh-bone, with which he appeared to have been just knocking down some member of the company for a song.

Queen Pest:

Opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit the less extraordinary character. Although quite as tall as the person just described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. She was evidently in the last stage of a dropsy [i. .e, edema]; and her figure resembled nearly that of the huge puncheon [an eighty-gallon cask] of October beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. Her face was exceedingly round, red, and full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion proved to be the mouth. Commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to the left—the short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made, however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a newly starched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ruffle of cambric muslin.

In A Handbook to Literature, fourth edition, C. Hugh Holman defines “grotesque,” in its literary context, as the depiction of “characters” who are “either physically or spiritually deformed” and “perform actions that are clearly intended by the author to be abnormal” (207). This technique, Holman adds, “may be used for allegorical statement” and “for comic purposes” (207), as, clearly, Poe uses this technique in “King Pest.”

Finding the seamen's entrance rude and their inquiry into the nature of his family's business outrageous, King pest fines the sailors, sentencing Legs and Tarpaulin to drink a gallon of Black Strap “at a single draught—and upon . . . bended knees,” whereupon they will be free to take their leave or to stay as the king's guest. (In other words, King Pest sentences the seamen to be drowned in the ale, after which their bodies will be cast aside, in the undertaker's shop, or be discarded outside,)

It's possible that, drunk, neither Legs nor Tarpaulin understand the king's sarcasm. It is possible, too, that they understand his literal intent all too well but, bolstered by false courage, pretend ignorance as a pretext for braggadocio and bragging. Legs objects that he has drunk his fill earlier, at the tavern he and Tarpaulin visited, but his companion insists that he can drink more and offers to drink both the gallon that Legs has been ordered to drink and the gallon that he himself has been ordered to drink.

However, King Pest declares that his fine must be paid in the manner he has imposed, without alteration.

Tarpaulin refuses to kneel to the king, whom he recognizes as 'Tim Hurlygurly the stage-player.”

Trapaulin's refusal is met by a chorus of shouts, as the king, queen, and the rest of the family cry “Treason!”

Legs floods the undertaker's shop with ale from the hogshead that he breaks after his companion is deposited head-first inside the cask, to drown, and the sailors attack the king and his family, killing the man with the gout, drowning “the man with the horrors,” sending the man in the coffin away on the flood, and leaving the ladies in “hysterics.” Then, Tarpaulin abducts the fat lady in the shroud, while Legs kidnaps the Arch Duchess Ana-Past and the sailors return to their ship, which, presumably, is still anchored in the Thames.

What can be said of such a story?

Robert Louis Stevenson concluded, about its author, that “he who could write 'King Pest' had ceased to be a human being.”

Perhaps Stevenson was unaware that Poe's story is a comedy—a satire, in fact.

Are the story's king, queen, and other family members based on historical persons?

Poe's king is tall and bony; his complexion is “saffron.” His brow is “unusually and hideously lofty.” His mouth is “puckered and dimpled.” Unfortunately, history does not appear to provide us with a description of King Edward III's physical appearance. However, his tomb includes a likeness of him, carved in stone. Since the sculpture purports to represent his likeness, we can assume that it, indeed, resembles the king at the time of his death. Judging by this figure, King Edward III does appear to have been tall and thin, if not “gaunt.” His forehead does not seem especially “lofty.” His mouth is not “puckered and dimpled.”

Queen Pest shares one of the conditions that afflicted Queen Philippa of Hainault (1315 - 1369), but she otherwise does not resemble the true queen, King Edward III's wife, whom historian Ian Mortimer describes:

The lady whom we saw has not uncomely hair, betwixt blue-black and brown. Her head is clean-shaped; her forehead high and broad, and standing somewhat forward. Her face narrows between the eyes, and the lower part of her face is still more narrow and slender than her forehead. Her eyes are blackish-brown and deep. Her nose is fairly smooth and even, save that it is somewhat broad at the tip and also flattened, and yet it is no snub-nose. Her nostrils are also broad, her mouth fairly wide. Her lips somewhat full, and especially the lower lip. Her teeth which have fallen and grown again are white enough, but the rest are not so white. The lower teeth project a little beyond the upper; yet this is but little seen. Her ears and chin are comely enough. Her neck, shoulders, and all her body are well set and unmaimed; and nought is amiss so far as a man may see. Moreover, she is brown of skin all over, and much like her father; and in all things she is pleasant enough, as it seems to us. And the damsel will be of the age of nine years on St. John's day next to come, as her mother saith. She is neither too tall nor too short for such an age; she is of fair carriage, and well taught in all that becometh her rank, and highly esteemed and well beloved of her father and mother and of all her meinie [i. e., small-minded], in so far as we could inquire and learn the truth (The Register of Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, 1307–1326).

The condition which Queen Pest has in common with Queen Philippa is dropsy, or edema, or an illness similar to it, from which she expired.

Part of the satire lies in his descriptions of King Pest, Queen Pest, and the other members of the royal household, who suffer from various diseases, such as emaciation, dropsy (edema), delirium tremens, and consumption (tuberculosis). However, the story may not be about the English at all.

Poe supplies a hint of his intention in the story's subtitle, “A Tale Containing an Allegory.” As Dawn B. Sova observes in Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, “each character . . . represents a different type of 'pest,' from the intellectual who produces nothing original to the drunkard” (91).

It seems clear that Poe takes artistic license in describing the characters of “King Pest.” His story alludes to, but is not much based upon, historical incidents and these royal individuals. Its aim is not to narrate history, but to satirize politics and political actors. The targets of Poe's satire may not, in fact, be English at all.

One critic is convinced that the story satirizes “an extremely wet banquet on January 8, 1832, honoring both president Andrew Jackson and . . . the abolition of the national debt.” According to The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition, which cites William Whipple, one of the founders of the United States, King Pest is Jackson; Queen Pest is his wife Rachel; the Arch-Duchess Ana-Pest is Peggy Eaton; “the man with the bandaged leg and cheeks on his shoulders” is Colonel Thomas Hart Benton; “the thin man with the alcoholic tremor” is Francis Blair “of the Globe”; “the paralyzed man in the coffin” is Amos Kendall or William H. Crawford; Tarpaulin is Martin Van Buren; and Legs is probably Major Jack Downing (294).

Along these same lines, A Companion to Poe Studies adds to this interpretation, noting that King Pest is described as “the President of the Table”:

He is tall and gaunt, with a yellow complexion and a lofty forehead, his head decorated with sable plumes. This is Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1937) . . . . The story takes place in “the parish of St. Andrew's Stair” [the direction in which Legs and Tarpaulin flee from the tavern's landlady]. The stairway of Jackson's home named “The Heritage,” near Nashville, Tennessee, was named “St. Andrew's Stair.” The undertaker's shop, therefore, must be the kitchen of the White House, and the other persons are the members of the Jackson “family,” including some members of Jackson's Kitchen Cabinet. Queen Pest, the lady with the big mouth, is Peggy Eaton, the wife of Secretary of War John Henry Eaton, whose chastity Jackson defended; Arch Duke Pest-Iferous, who has large ears, is Amos Kendell, fourth auditor (< L. audire, to hear) of the Treasury; Duke Pest-Ilential, who has goggle-eyes, is Francis Preston Blair, Sr., assistant editor of the Frankfort (Kentucky) newspaper, The Argus (giant with a hundred eyes), and editor of the Washington Globe (globus, ball; hence, related to “bulging” or “goggle”-eyes); Duke Tem-Pest, who is cheeky, is Secretary of War Eaton, whose wife became the center of a teapot tempest that split the president's cabinet wide open; and Arch Duchess Ana-Pest, the diminutive, haut-ton lady who is consumptive is Emily Donelson, Jackson's acting First Lady (his wife, Rachel, died ten weeks before his inauguration). Emily died of consumption in December 1836 (126).

Although these interpretations don't agree in every respect, it's clear that both critics believe that the allegory to which Poe alludes in his story's subtitle is, indeed, political in nature and targets American president Andrew Jackson and various members of his political “family.”

Notes

Peggy Eaton and her second husband, Secretary of War John Eaton, were scorned by the wives of Andrew Jackson's cabinet on the basis of unfounded rumors that Peggy had had an affair, which caused her first husband John Timberlake to commit suicide in 1828. (In fact, Timberlake died from pneumonia.) The wives would neither call upon the Eatons nor invite them to parties and other functions. Although Jackson tried to end this “Petticoat Affair,” by forcing the wives to accept the Eatons, their ostracism of the Secretary of War and his wife was supported by Johnson's vice-president, John C. Calhoun. As a result, Jackson supported Martin Van Buren, who had accepted the Eatons. Van Buren's resignation helped to end the scandal, and Jackson replaced his disloyal cabinet members. At the end of Jackson's term, Calhoun was not renominated as vice president, and he resigned. Van Buren replaced him on the ticket as Jackson's vice president and succeeded him as president in 1837.

In The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House, historian John F. Marszalek may shine some light on why Poe describes Queen Pest as having a cavernous mouth that extends from ear to ear:

She did not know her place; she forthrightly spoke up about anything that came to her mind, even topics of which women were supposed to be ignorant . . . .

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Blair was “an ardent follower of Andrew Jackson,” whom the newspaperman “helped” to elect during the 1828 presidential election. A year later, after becoming the editor of the Washington Globe, Blair was doubly effective in influencing politics at the national level, as he also belonged to the Kitchen Cabinet, the president's own unofficial advisory group.

For Untouchables: Masochistic Horror

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In the middle of a pandemic, most of us might not care to read stories involving plagues and pandemics. However, horror fiction appeals to masochistic readers as well as to others and, if the truth were to be told, there is, in most, if not all, of us, a bit of the masochist. Fear is disturbing. It is stressful. It is unpleasant. Paradoxically, however, it is also quite pleasurable to many of us. If it were not, there would be no profit in making horror movies or in writing horror novels or short stories.

Critics and psychologists suggest that the reason that we enjoy horror dramas and narratives is that we know that, despite what happens on the sound stage or on the page, we ourselves, as spectators or readers, are safe. What happens to the victims in the story cannot happen to us. We enjoy the invincibility of the secret voyeur. We watch, untouched and untouchable. That is our power. We survive the slaughter because it cannot do to us what it does to the characters in the movie or the book. (Only, in the case of the coronavirus, we may not be quite as invincible as we might imagine!)

So, for the masochistic supermen and superwomen among us, Chillers and Thrillers suggests a pair of horrific tales by the father of modern horror himself, Edgar Allan Poe. One of the two tales caused Robert Louis Stevenson to opine that “he who could write [this story] had ceased to be a human being.” Which story occasioned this assessment of its author, “The Masque of the Red Death” or “King Pest”? Chillers and Thrillers will leave the answer to this question to you to decide!

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

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.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you" -- here I opened wide the door; --

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore!"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!"

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --

"'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--

Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before--

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "Thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore,

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!--

Whether Tempest sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--

On this home by Horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore--

Is there-- is there balm in Gilead?-- tell me-- tell me, I implore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! --quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and Take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

The opening stanza of this celebrated poem sets the tone, suggests that the narrator, or speaker, is uneasy about something; establishes the mood as a somber, gloomy one; and, of course, presents the rhyme scheme, which is both complex and calculatingly hypnotic:

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 some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

The speaker tells us that he was half-asleep, after poring over “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” such as, today, one might find, perhaps, in the New Age section of a bookstore--books on the occult, otherworldly, and paranormal. The adjectives, coupled with the poem’s internal and end-rhymes and the repetition of certain images and ideas (especially the phrase “nothing more“), creates a sense of gloom that is pervasive throughout the initial poem, as the same technique, employed in the following stanzas will prove to be throughout the rest of the work.

In this first stanza, the knock at the door seems “gentle,” and the speaker supposes that it signifies “some visitor,” “only this and nothing more.” His supposition seems reasonable, but it does introduce the question as to why he might thing that it could be anything more than merely “some visitor”? (It is important to observe that the speaker not only asks the questions that are posed buy that he also answers them; both the questions and the answers to them are his own.) What else does he, perhaps, suppose the tapping, rapping at the door might signify and why? With this seemingly innocent, casual comment on the speaker’s part, especially considering that the hour is midnight--the so-called witches’ hour--and that he has been studying “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,“ an air of mystery and a hint of the malevolent enter the poem, which will become more and more pronounced.

In the next stanza, Poe, through the speaker, sets the scene, informing the reader that it was--and here’s another gloomy adjective “in the bleak December,” which is to say, the winter of the year, a season often associated with death. He reinforces the idea of death by using terms and images associated with it. Each coal in the fireplace is a “dying ember,” which is reflected upon the floor as if it were a “ghost.” It is obvious that death is much on the speaker’s mind--so much so, in fact, that he includes images of death in the description even of so mundane a phenomenon as a fire smoldering in his fireplace. The death of the fire is a slow one; the speaker marks the death of “each separate dying ember.” It is as if the fire represents the slow dying of his own hope or faith as well as his own sanity, which becomes more and more discernable as the poem progresses. He also tells the reader the motive for his having burned the midnight oil, poring over these “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” He was hoping to ease his grief at having suffered the death of his beautiful, beloved, whom he describes as “the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,” whom he recognizes is gone from his presence for ever, “nameless here for evermore.” He does not seek solace from his grief by reading the Bible or some other religious holy book, it should be observed; rather, he has sought to find “surcease of sorrow” in the study of “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”:

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

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.

So absorbed has the narrator been with his grief that, upon awakening to the tapping at his door, he is startled by the rustling of the curtains. The adjectives that he uses to describe the curtains’ rustling are those which he chooses; as such, they tell us about his own mental state, since, obviously cloth cannot experience emotions--it is he who feels and (using a Freudian term) projects his feelings onto the curtain, characterizing them as “sad” and “uncertain,” just as, earlier, he described the smoldering coals of his fire as “dying embers,” each of which reflected its “ghosts upon the floor.” The speaker’s word choice, as demonstrated in the adjectives that he uses in descriptions of the mundane objects and phenomena in his environment, together with his personifications of those objects and phenomena, do more to characterize him, showing his thoughts and feelings, than they do anything else. It is he who feels himself to be dying, not the fire, and it is he feels sad and uncertain, not the rustling curtains. The reader must wonder why the mere rustling of curtains should “thrill” the speaker, filling him with “fantastic terrors never felt before” and make himself stand, repeating, over and over, “"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--/ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --/ This it is and nothing more,” as if to convince himself of the truth of this explanation of the rustling curtains. The reader is apt, at this point, to wonder about the narrator. At best, he seems unduly frightened and worried; at worst, he seems to have a questionable grip on his sanity.

The effect of his repeating to himself that it is only “some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door” seems to calm him, as he says that “presently my soul grew stronger,” and he is able to end his hesitation about answering his visitor’s knock, although the hesitant manner in which he finally does answer, begging his visitor’s forgiveness and explaining why he is late in answering the knock, indicates that he remains frightened and apprehensive. When he finally does open the door, he sees “darkness there and nothing more.” The reader can imagine his shock and terror at finding no visitor there. He has told himself, again and again, that the tapping and rapping at his door and the rustling of the curtains at his windows have a simple, natural explanation and portend nothing more than the appearance of “some visitor.” Now, faced with “darkness . . . and nothing more,” that theory has been shown to be wrong.

His fear, as the next stanza shows, increases immensely as a result, and he next hypothesizes that the cause of the sounds he’s heard may be supernatural or otherworldly; he suspects that his “visitor” may have been the dead Lenore! However, when he goes back into his room and hears a louder tapping than that which he has heard before, this time coming from his window lattice, he attributes the sound to the effect of the wind. To explain the sounds that he hears, the speaker alternates between attributing the cause of those sounds to the supernatural or otherworldly and to the natural and mundane. He also seems to recognize that he is in an excited, frightened state of mind, because he tells himself, “Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’”

The speaker’s state of mind is conveyed by his behavior as much as by his speech. Now, he throws open the shutter to his window, as if to take by surprise whatever thing, natural or monstrous, that may wait outside his room, thereupon meeting the raven. The speaker personifies the bird, just as he has the fire and the curtains. It is a noble bird, which makes “not the least obeisance. . . but, with mein of lord or lady,” takes up its perch above the speaker’s door, as if the speaker’s room were its own and the speaker, rather than the bird, were the master of the house:

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

The speaker is first amused by the solemnity of the “stately Raven”--notice the capital “R”; this is no mere raven, but The Raven--a god in avian plumage--but his amusement soon gives way to dread as he imagines that this “grim and ancient Raven” is a representative from the land of the dead, a lord from “the Night’s Plutonian shore.” Again, these are the speaker’s own thoughts. He continues to personify the bird that has entered his chamber, attributing not merely human but divine attributes to the bird, seeing it as an emissary of the dead, as a messenger sent, perhaps, by the Roman god of the dead, Pluto, himself.

When the anxious speaker asks the bird to tell him what it is called in the land of the dead, the bird answers, “Nevermore.” The reply seems to put the speaker’s fears to rest, for he muses upon the notion of a bird that can seemingly talk but whose reply is but a meaningless absurdity. Again, the speaker vacillates, hesitantly, back and forth between rational thought and mad imaginings:

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

The speaker is quick to note that the bird’s vocabulary seems to consist of but this one word: “But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only/ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.” Although, in response to the speaker’s question, the raven’s reply had borne “little relevancy,” it is interesting to note that the same response soon will come to have greater and greater significance for the speaker (who, after all, frames the questions to which the same reply is always to be made). Indeed, this single-word answer to his questions will come to terrify him, intensifying his despair of ever again seeing his “lost Lenore.”

The reader should remember, throughout the reading of the poem, that the raven answers always with the same word; it is the speaker who must frame the questions so that the bird’s response appears to be significant and appears, it might be added, to reinforce the speaker’s own preconceptions about the what, if anything, follows death. Only in the speaker’s mind is the raven The Raven, because it is he who poses questions to which “nevermore” may be regarded as being a significant response. As the speaker himself confesses, it is he who ponders possible meanings for the bird’s “croaking ‘Nevermore’”:

. . . Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

The speaker, at first, cannot discern whether the raven is sent from God or from the devil, whether it is a messenger from heaven or from hell. When he asks it whether there is “balm in Gilead,” or a salve that is capable of healing his anguished grief at Lenore’s death, the raven replies, not surprisingly to the reader, “Nevermore,” whereupon, not liking this answer, the speaker believes the raven must be a bird from hell, although one that is able to discern the future, and he asks--almost begs to know--whether he shall ever hold Lenore in his embrace again, whether, in short, there is a life after death, during which he and his beloved may be reunited:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Outraged at this reply (which he contrived to be the answer by the way that he formulated his question), the speaker orders the raven from his chamber, but the bird ignores his command, remaining on his perch above the door:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted--nevermore!

Now, the same bird that the speaker has characterized variously as merely an “ebony bird,” as an emissary from “the Night’s Plutonian shore,” as a messenger sent by God or the devil, and as a demonic prophet, now regards it as the very embodiment of wisdom, for it occupies (not, in the mind of the narrator, by sheer chance, the reader may assume) “the pallid bust of Pallas,” or Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Here, we take our leave of the speaker, leaving him obsessed with the idea that, in having (apparently subconsciously) answered his own questions about the likelihood of his attaining “surcease of sorrow” by being reunited with his “lost Lenore,“ he has determined, just as he had believed all along, that there is no existence beyond death, and that the proper attitude to take concerning the belief in the survival of death is a despairing disbelief. His “lost Lenore” was lost even before the raven appeared to him, to reinforce his beliefs that death is the end of life and that there is no hope in an existence beyond the grave.