"The Raven" [eText Record] [Link to poem] by Edgar Allen Poe [About Author]

 

I. Objectives/NCTE Standards:

 

Students will read and interpret Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven by applying their knowledge of poetic elements and poem dissection.  Students will ultimately draw interpretive conclusions after they are guided through the reading and analysis of the poem through a teacher-directed reading and questioning fueled discussion.

 

1.  Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.

2.  Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.

3.  Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

4.  Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.

5.  Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.

6.  Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

 

II. Before Reading Activities: 

 

Prior to reading this poem, students should be well acquainted with poetic elements and should feel quite comfortable analyzing and interpreting a poem because The Raven is not a starter poem.  For a specific focus, the teacher should consider discussing metaphor, as the raven in the poem represents despair.  Because the poem can be confusing, it might be helpful to have students journal about the word, raven.  Tell them up front that the raven represents an outlook or perception of life.  Ask them to make associations or predictions about what the raven might represent. 

 

For example, ask them what feeling or emotion comes to mind when they hear the word, sunshine.  Most students will note that sunshine often is associated with happiness, smiling, joy, etc.  The whole idea is to get students thinking about what this raven might represent in order to figure it out within the poem.  The teacher might also give a description and/or a picture of a raven to look at for students to write about their associations with it.

 

III.  During Reading Activities:

 

Throughout reading the poem, the teacher should stop to check comprehension as well as interpret the poem. 

• After the first two stanzas, the teacher should ask students to provide the setting (December night at midnight in the speaker’s room).  By the end of the second stanza, students can also begin to determine what state the speaker is in. 
• The teacher might ask students who they think Lenore is and why the speaker is so sad.  (Lenore is the woman he loved, and she is no longer with him.) 
• Within the next several stanzas, students can begin to make inferences about the speaker and his state of mind.  What is he scared of?  To relate the content to them, the teacher might also ask students if they would be scared if they were all alone, in a saddened state, and they heard tapping at the door and other noises. 
• Once the raven begins to speak, the teacher should emphasize the importance of repetition.  What does the repeated word spoken by the raven, “nevermore” do for the poem?  (It builds tension and suspense.)  How does the speaker account for this repetition of only the one word, “nevermore?”
• After a period of this strange behavior, the speaker begins to believe that the raven has been sent by angels.  Ask students to infer why he might think that.  (By looking back to the beginning of the poem, where the speaker is introduced as a character who is in a depressed state over the loss of his loved one, students should be able to infer that he thinks God has taken pity on him or is sending him a message.)
• Because he thinks God sent the raven, what does he want the raven to tell him?  (He wants to know if he will be reunited with Lenore when he dies.) 
• When the raven continues to reply with “nevermore,” the speaker’s attitude goes from amusement to despair and madness.  As the raven drives him mad, what ultimately happens to the speaker?  (The speaker’s own madness destroys him.)

IV. After Reading Activities:

 

After reading the poem, the students should be asked to draw conclusions about the poem—both its speaker and the raven. 

• What does the raven ultimately represent in the poem?  As the students have seen the speaker in a state of despair, followed by fear, then amusement, and finally madness, why is the raven significant?  What does it ultimately represent?  (Students will note that the raven ultimately represents the speaker’s own state of despair, and it is his own despair that drives him to his death. 
• Students should also be asked why the word “nevermore” is so significant.  Why do you think Poe chose that word?  (Students should notice that it rhymes with Lenore.)

V. Assessment:

 

Throughout the study of the poem, students can be assessed informally through teacher monitoring and teacher leading.  Based on how well they answer the questions and how easily they come to the conclusions, the teacher should be able to gauge how much they’ve learned.  For the after reading questions, the teacher may have students respond in small group discussion, large group discussion, or through writing activities, such as an exit slip.  The after reading questions will allow the teacher to discover who really understood the poem as a whole.  However, during reading, students can be a great help to one another, so this poem should not be tackled individually, but rather as a class or in small groups with questions posed by the teacher to facilitate comprehension and promote analysis.  The teacher might also consider having small groups of students memorize and perform this poem creating a new setting to demonstrate how characters can transcend a setting or time period.

 

"The Raven" [eText Record] [Link to poem] by Edgar Allen Poe [About Author]