In my class the question of murder was brought up, and this caught my attention. Im curious to know, Do you think the narrator in "The Raven" killed his wife?

-- Anonymous, September 10, 2001

Answers

No. The idea seems like an absurd modern imposition on Poe's poem. There is no such suggestion in Poe's own analysis of the poem, "The Philosophy of Composition."

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2001

I agree. As shaky as the narrator is Poe would have included a huge element of guilt. The only thing shaking up the narrator is his melancholy doubt and fear, memories turning from hope to unrelenting despair.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 2001

No. In fact, I've always wondered if at the end of that poem the narrator took his own life. The part where he talks about going into the shadow. It gave me the impression that he might have flung himself from the window. Any thoughts? Agree, disagree?

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2002

No, Poe did not experience such an event in his life. He did however, experience the loss of a few potential wives, and one wife. In his life there is a reoccuring theme of loneliness through the hands of chance and fate, not of murder.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2002

I'd have to agree about in the end of "The Raven" on the narrator taking his own life. I am currently in the middle of a research paper compairing both "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven" and one of the striking resimbulances is the possability of the narrators taking their own lives at the end of each of them. I say "possability" because the end of either the narrator could have gone compleatly insane instead of very much dead. In "The Raven" the mentioning of water, "Plutonian Shore" aka: The River Styxs, and that narrator was floating on the floor. This could mean that he died, and because of comiting suiside couldn't arise to “Aidenn”/Edan, where his Lenore was.

Just my few cents worth.

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2003