Poe’s Use of Rhetorical Appeals in The Raven

Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” is about the struggle of losing someone close to them, although to go through the process seems to be more treacherous than it may seem to those that have only experienced the latter than the former. The Raven is a story Poe wrote in 1845, which brought him great praise and fame for its publication, but beneath the web woven of a grand literary piece of art, lie a few questions to be answered. Was the Raven effective in getting Poe’s intention of creating a relatable poem across to his audience, who was the intended audience at that time and does his work have any credibility behind it?

To understand what makes “The Raven” effective in its message, one must look at the appeals it makes. Once you read it in-depth, it becomes clear that the poem is actually a pathos based piece of literature. The entire poem is about a young man’s struggle to deal with the loss of his beloved, from beginning to end it is about the young man’s focus on the loss of his love, Lenore. It is only when the raven enters the story that we begin to see this man’s unease in his loss. “`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.'” Because of his despair, the young man begins to question the reasoning of the raven’s presence, imagining the raven as the devil who has come from the depths of Hell to torture him over his loss. Since Poe digs deeply into the loss of Lenore, the piece is saturated in pitifulness, going off the feelings of despair, fear, and grief to make it seem like it was a human telling their life story or a fervent dream symbolizing what it felt like to lose someone. Lenore is the focus of the young man’s anguish, which is the defining arc of the story of the raven tormenting him. This despondency that the man faces and the emotional roller coaster controlled by the raven all play off the concept of absolute pathos. However, that doesn’t mean the story only has pathos within it, for what was happening to Poe contributed to the use of ethos.

The value of ethos comes in this piece comes from the fact that Poe is a bit familiar with losing those important to him. Starting from losing his mother when he was young, and even having his wife getting diagnosed with tuberculosis while he was writing ‘The Raven’. Giving Poe the imminent sense of dread and credibility given how ill his wife was, and would ultimately pass away in the following years. Even though he hadn’t lost her at the time of writing ‘The Raven’, that doesn’t mean it makes his piece any less credible due to the predicament. If anything, it would only strengthen it given it could be seen as a way for him to become mentally prepared for when it is time for his wife to pass away. Coming to terms with a loved one who is expected to pass is something that everyone must endure at some point in their life, and this piece can be seen as Poe’s way of letting his grief, anxiety, and rage over it all out through his poem. Connecting it to others who have also lost someone close to them, and drawing them in as a part of his intended audience.

“The Raven” has a very broad audience but was never intended to be read by so many over the years. “The Raven” was for a smaller audience because he released the poem in a simple magazine without the intent of reaching the masses. Because he wrote it for the magazine, the intended audience was only for a small group of people such as neighbors and such; the expanded audience became all those who came across it through the publication of the poem in subsequent printings. The writing style of the piece uses a vast vocabulary and complex rhyme scheme that isn’t too often seen in standard poetic writings. The content has a horror twist to it, which Poe used to narrow down and target his audience even further.

Despite using these tactics Poe manages to appeal to a larger audience than he would have expected, mostly due to its very emotionally driven storyline. Emotions are drawn out from the loss of Lenore, but also from the madness in which this young man goes through because of his loss. It also appeals on a bigger scale because of the structure of the poem, due to the fact that it has a consistent rhyme to it; it can be enjoyed for its poetic structure alone and doesn’t need to appeal in the sense of literature. The bird, the raven, is a bad symbol by itself, and Poe used the raven as an emotional instigator to the young man’s feelings and acts as a torturer of the young man. Because of the highly charged emotional content and the period Poe was going through as he was writing, “The Raven” is able to appeal to a greater audience than Poe intended for.

Although Poe attempted to appeal to a handful of readers, he ended up appealing to a much larger audience over the following centuries. Poe was able to utilize every piece of his writing to reach an audience much larger than the one he initially intended. Because he utilizes each stanza and with a great amount of depth in them, he was able to compose a stronger piece and to appeal to a much larger audience. With this, his piece has become well known as both a literary piece as well as one that perfectly uses his intention of releasing his feelings about coming to terms with losing his wife.