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Examples Of Diction In The Raven

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Edgar Allan Poe uses diction in his poem “The Raven” to create an eerie, chilling, and dark mood. To start, in the first stanza when Poe is setting the scene, he says: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” (st. 1). He uses “midnight dreary” and
“weak and weary” specifically to create a dark, foreboding mood throughout the poem. The second example of Poe using diction to create a chilling mood comes after the narrator hears a knock at his door: “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, / And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor” (st. 2). Poe is using examples of death to create his dark mood here, using “bleak December” and a “ghost”, to relate to dead trees and dark skies.
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8). Poe here is referring to the Devil and describes the raven as
“grim and ancient”, which deepens the eerie darkness Poe is trying to create. Another example of
Poe using diction to create an eerie mood is when the narrator is beginning to lose his mind, saying “Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore” (st. 11). His use of “dirges”, or funeral songs, and “melancholy burden bore” adds to his overall mood of chilling darkness and the eerie mood in “The Raven”. Later, when the narrator is losing his mind, he says that the bird has “fiery eyes” that “now burned into my bosom’s core” (st. 13), indicating that the bird is now
Allemand 2 a horrible, frightening creature that can only do him harm. Poe’s diction used to describe the raven in this way adds a deeper darkness to the raven itself as well as the overall scene. The last example of Poe using diction to create a dark mood is seen in many of the stanzas throughout the poem. In many of them, the last word is “Nevermore” (st. 8-18). In these stanzas, the narrator can be seen to slowly lose his mind over the death of his lost love Lenore. Poe uses

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