Seven Days of Poe final post: The Raven

It wasn't my plan to write about this particular poem of Poe. Everybody knows The Raven. Even if a person has not actually read The Raven themselves, they know someone who has or have seen a version of it on television.The most popular being the Simpson's version which is narrated by James Earl Jones and is, in all honesty, fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxJHUD9Su2E&feature=related
Or there is this version, as read by the brilliant Vincent Price. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7zR3IDEHrM
Or this version with Christoper Lee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofSOul1NB8Q

The story is about psychological horror and the devious tricks that the mind will play upon itself.
The unnamed narrator is sitting alone and reading, something he often does to take his mind off Lenore, his lost love. Poe sets everything up so perfectly: a vast and gloomy room, a man deadened by his grief, and the noises that taunt him from the shadows, from the corridors, and from outside. When the raven first flies into the room it is welcomed and is a curiosity. The raven speaks, even if it is only a single word: Nevermore. However, when the melancholy once again falls upon the mind, the narrator's questioning of the raven takes a darker and more desperate turn, and the raven changes into an omen of evil and ill fortune.

"'Prophet!' said I, 'thing of evil!-prophet still,
if bird or devil!-
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest
tossed thee there 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.'"

Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Will I ever find peace?
And yet, in the poem as is in real life, there is no answer to be given to the living. He can find no answers for himself and the raven itself can offer nothing. And, like the doubts it represents, it is implied that the raven will stay with the broken man for the rest of his days.

"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!"