The Raven, a poem by Edgar Allen Poe has within, a healthy contradiction of memory and trying to forget lost love which Poe puts forth through allision, rhyme, and plot. Poe uses allusion to represent the contradiction in the poem when he refers to “Balm of Gilead” and the “bust of Pallas”. The “Balm of Gilead” is referencing an ancient mystical cure-all in the bible, something that would remove the pain (and in this case memory) of the narrators lost love. This directly contradicts another of his allusions the “bust of Pallas” which refers to the Greek goddess Pallas Athena the goddess of wisdom and knowledge, which is an allusion to the mind and memory, thus fulfilling the contradiction of memory and trying to forget lost love. These excerpts…show more content… This line rhymes with most other lines in this poem as if Poe is telling the reader to remember, something that means no longer or never again. This, an interesting contradiction between the act of memory through rhyme, and the fact that you are remembering the word “Nevermore”, helps create the overarching contradiction of memory and and trying to forget lost love throughout the poem. The final way that Poe creates this contradiction is through plot. This can be shown through the plot of the poem. The poem starts with the narrator saying “I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” he explains why he is doing when he says “I had sought to borrow from my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore” thus he was using the books to forget about Lenore; as further explained when he asks the Raven “respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore”. But he cannot forget Lenore, as can be seen when he begs the Raven “ Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore”, thus showing the contradiction within the plot as the narrator wants to forget these memories of Lenore, but at the same time he he feels that he cannot forget Lenore and hopes that he will see her
