Gothic Setting In The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

Words: 281
Pages: 2

In “The Raven”, Poe creates a gothic setting that helps develop the depressed and desperately mournful character of the speaker. Within the first two stanzas, Poe tells us that it is “a midnight dreary”, and it is a “bleak December” (Poe). The reader immediately knows that this poem is suspenseful due to the use of the dark setting. The reader also knows the speaker is in his room because Poe tells us that there was “tapping at my chamber door” (Poe). The reader can assume that the speaker is in a castle or a large manor house because a typical home would simply have bedrooms and bedroom doors. The idea that the speaker is in a castle is also confirmed when he sees the Raven “perched upon a bust of Pallas” since average homes do not have mythological