Examples Of Alliteration In The Raven

The Raven

In the poem “The Raven” he narrator is mourning over a person he loved named Lenore. Being lost in his thoughts, he is suddenly startled when he hears a tapping at his door. When he goes to the door there is no one there. He goes back into his room and then he hears tapping on his window. He opens his window and a Raven steps into his room. The narrator has been on an emotional roller coaster throughout the whole entire poem; talking to this Raven makes him feel even worse. In the poem Edgar Poe uses many literary devices. For example he uses alliteration, internal rhyme, and allusion. Alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. Poe uses this literary device to describe the in bird in line 71 he says, “What grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore.” It gives the line a rhythm and tone that is easily understood and read. This use of alliteration tell the reader how dark, and evil the narrator felt around this bird. In line three he uses alliteration again by saying, “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping...” Gives a flow to the line that is not

Poe’s doe this a few times while telling his story. For example in line 41, he notes that the bird was, “Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.” In this line he mentions a “bust of Pallas”, which is a statue of the head and shoulders of Pallas Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. He automatically assumes that the reader already knows what a “bust of Pallas” is, and doesn’t explain what it is. There is also allusion in line 46 he says, “Tell me what lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” In this instance he asked what the bird was called on the Plutonian shore, which has something to do with Pluto, the Roman god of the dead and ruler of the