The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

William Peter Blatty, the author of The Exorcist, has an eccentric style that is marked by his tendency to create similes and metaphors that unite concrete and abstract terms. This practice is so commonplace in his novel as to indicate that it is more than merely a technique; it is essential to his narrative voice and, therefore, part of both his novel’s point of view and its theme.

 
In just the prologue to his novel, he includes the following tropes, each of which combines the physical and the spiritual, the literal and the figurative, the concrete and the abstract:

• a “premonition clung to his [Father Merrin’s] back like chill wet leaves” (3);
• “[the] tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped” (3);
•  “he dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but could not tag it” 4);
• “slippers, [the] groaning backs [of which] pressed under his heels” (4);
• “shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living” (4);
• “The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt” (4);
• “a splintered table the color of sadness” (5);
• “he waited, feeling at the stillness” (5);
• “the fractured rooftops of Erbil hovered far in the distance, poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction” (5);
• “it [“safety” and “a sense of protection and deep well-being”] dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep” (5);
• “some dry, tagged whisper of the past” (5-6);
• “its dominion was sickness and disease” (6); “the bloody dust of its predestination” (7-8);
• “icy conviction” (8). 
  

What, one may ask, does Blatty gain, as an artist, by mixing the sensual and the ideal, the real and the intangible, the concrete and the abstract? The author himself offers a clue, in his novel’s prologue:

The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted snows caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other (4).

This paragraph suggests that Father Merrin does not view reality in dualistic terms, as consisting of matter and of spirit, both of which are real. Rather, he is a monist, someone who believes that reality consists of only one essential element, although this element can appear to have two distinct expressions, that of matter and that of spirit. Truly understood, however, each is a mere shadow, as it were, of the one, true “stuff,” which is “more fundamental” and “totally other,” which is, in religious terms, God. According to Father Merrin's faith as a Catholic, God is omnipresent, or everywhere present at once; therefore, the Spirit of God penetrates, if it does not actually embody, all things, shoes and “spirit” alike. If matter and spirit, like matter and energy, are interchangeable with one another, the body which housed a human soul in the distant past may now be mere bones, an artifact among other artifacts, as Blatty’s inclusion of human bones in his catalogue of other relics at the outset of the novel’s prologue indicates:

The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics and phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that had once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. . . (3-4).

The “he” in the final sentence of this paragraph might seem ambiguous: does it refer to Father Merrin or to humanity? Is it an individual or a universal perspective, the understanding that human skeletal remains do not signify a Luciferian “upward-groping back to. . . God?” The ambiguity is resolved almost as soon as it arises, if it does, in fact, arise at all, by the context of the paragraph in which the personal pronoun appears, for the paragraph speaks not of the priest, but of humanity: “he,” therefore, refers to “man,” not to Father Merrin, whose own point of view is very different, as one may already have discerned, than the worldview implied by metaphysical dualism, which sees both matter and spirit as opposite, if not opposing, realities, whereas Father Merrin sees them as both but “aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other,” or as expressions or, perhaps, indications, of a transcendent divinity.
 
Blatty’s mixing of the concrete and the abstract also has the effect of making the latter seem more substantial, even more sensual, than it might be if it were linked, in simile or metaphor, to other abstract, rather than with concrete, terms. A “premonition” that clings to one’s “back like chill wet leaves” can be felt: it is thick and wet, clammy and cold; a “tell” that has “entrails” is a living thing—or, perhaps, a once-living thing, murdered by the archaeologists as much as by time, in order that it might be dissected, and its ancient artifacts, including the “bones” of “man” examined and catalogued; “stillness” that can be felt is tangible, indeed.
 
By mixing the concrete and the abstract, Blatty breathes life, as it were, into dry and withered concepts and sensations, giving them the “flesh” of sensual qualities that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched; at the same time, his marriage of matter and spirit suggests the monistic metaphysics that Father Merrin believes expresses the reality of a wholly “other” God who transcends both and yet, paradoxically, somehow also brings the two “aspects” of reality and, indeed, of divinity, together in himself, just as, in the same cosmic sense, Jesus Christ brings matter—the flesh—and spirit together as the incarnation of God.
 
It is the notion that God is not physical or spiritual, but other, that Father Karras has not yet understood. Therefore, for him, the physical and the fleshly aspects of human existence are grotesque and offensive, as is seen in Father Karras’s reaction to a homeless man, whom he sees as vile. Karras has come, of late, to doubt his faith, partly because of the concrete embodiment of sin in human flesh and partly because of the reality of evil, which is also often associated with the physical and corporeal aspects of existence. The priest sees the decadence of sin in the person of a homeless man who pleads with him for alms:

. . . He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. . . (51).

Father Karras seems to equate human existence, or its fleshly aspect, at least, with evil:

A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. . . . Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in a paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop: set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. . . (54).

He has not yet attained the revelation that Father Merrin has experienced. Once, like Father Karras, the older, in some ways worldlier, Father Merrin found it difficult to love his neighbor as himself and to see in the human face and form the image and likeness of God; he has since overcome this stumbling block to faith, just as he has come to understand that evil is an offense to the goodness of God, not a quality inherent in mere matter or fleshly existence:

. . . The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man (3).

Indeed, it might be argued that Father Merrin has come to love the downtrodden and the oppressed because of their suffering, because of the evil in the world. Unlike Father Karras, who believes that demons are merely personifications of various evils, Father Merrin knows that the “Legion” of demons that claim to haunt Regan MacNeil are lying, that “there is only one,” the enemy of God, for Father Merrin has encountered—indeed, has fought—him before, in the guise of the demon Pazuzu, and knows that the true identity of the demon represented by the idol with the “ragged wings; taloned feet; bulbous, jutting, stubby penis and a mouth stretched taut in feral grin” is none other than Satan himself, the source and living embodiment of evil.
 
Father Karras is a materialist—or is in danger of becoming one. As such, he is obsessed with the physical, the fleshly, disease, and death; he is close to believing that only matter is real; and he has come to believe that evil is explainable in natural terms, as the effects of organic malformations of the brain or other physiological abnormalities.
 
Father Merrin, as a monist, accepts both the material, including the fleshly, and the spiritual as real, believing them to be but two aspects of a higher, unknowable “stuff” that is “totally other” than either of them and that evil is essentially nothing more than an offense to God. He is able to love Regan, despite the horrific onslaught of the demon—or the devil—who assaults her from within, often by the vilest and most corporeal means available to him—Regan’s own body.
 
Father Karras, on the other hand, is reluctant to seek “Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement.” It is only after he understands that God is beyond good and evil but is himself the essence of love that Father Karras can love Regan, in all her humanity, the way that Father Merrin has come to love human beings, whether a Kurd or the daughter of an actress who is temporarily residing in Georgetown. It is then that Father Karras can be the exorcist he has been called upon to be and can deliver the child whose body has been both a source of demonic violation of a temple of the Holy Spirit and a stumbling block to his own faith.
 
By mixing the concrete with the abstract in the peculiar similes and metaphors that appear frequently throughout his novel, Blatty brings together the material and the spiritual, making the former seem as tangible as the latter and suggesting one of his novel’s themes, which is that both aspects of reality find resolution, if not synthesis, in a higher, “totally other” form of being.

Source of quotations: Blatty, William Peter. The Exorcist. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Print.

Implications of Horror Fiction's Natural Antagonists

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Bela Lugosi is Count Dracula. Source: Wikipedia.

In a previous post, we considered the ethical and metaphysical implications of supernatural villains. In this post, let's consider the implications of horror fiction's natural antagonists.

For those who subscribe to a metaphysical dualism, sources of evil are often divided into supernatural and natural. The latter are often animals or natural disasters. Since such entities and forces are not moral agents, they are not held responsible for the “evil” (destruction, injury, and death) they cause, so there is no ethical dimension to their behavior.

However, when a moral agent controls a natural force or being, a moral dimension does exist, but in regard to the human actors, since they, as moral agents, are responsible for the harm that they unleash through the agency of the natural forces or creatures they direct.

The creature from the Black Lagoon. Source: pri.org

Nevertheless, as anyone who has watched a movie such as King Kong (1933), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), or Jaws (1975) is aware, wild animals can cause great havoc.

In The Creature, during an expedition to the Amazon, geologists investigate the fossilized remains of an organism intermediate between Earth's marine and terrestrial life forms. Thereafter, the team leader recruits an ichthyologist to assist them, but when they return to their campsite, they discover that the other team members have been killed, supposedly by a jaguar. (In the leader's absence, a surviving member of the species represented by the fossilized remains, curious about the scientists' camp, visits the site, where, frightened by the researchers, it attacks and kills the victims.)

Kay Lawrence and the creature. Source: reddit.com

The expedition then visits the black lagoon at the end of a tributary. When one of their members, Kay Lawrence, goes swimming, she is stalked by the creature, who loses a claw after becoming entangled in one of the drag lines of the crew's ship. Subsequently, the creature kills other members of the expedition until, caught, it is caged aboard the ship.

Escaping, it kills several more of the scientists and captures Kay, taking her to its lair in a cavern. The remaining scientists track the creature, rescue Kay, and kill the monstrous “Gil-man,” shooting it repeatedly.

Although the monster commits several murders, kidnaps Kay, and terrorizes the scientific team, it acts in self-defense, rather than with hostile intent, in an effort to protect itself and, in the case of Kay, perhaps as the result of its seeking a mate.

At no point does the creature intentionally harm anyone, other than in defense of its own life, and its self-defensive behavior is prompted by its instinct for survival, just as its abduction of Kay is an effect of its mating instinct. There is no malice aforethought. The creature does not plan; it does not act with conscious and deliberate intent; and most of its behavior is reactive, rather than causative. Therefore, the creature is not a moral agent.

King Kong meets Ann Darrow. Source: basementrejects.com

King Kong and the great white shark of Jaws are, like the creature from the Black Lagoon, merely animals that react to threats to their lives or, perhaps, with respect to Kong, the mating instinct (although, in his case, this possibility seems a stretch, given his size respective to that of his captive, Ann Darrow; it may be that Kong carries her off simply because he has been conditioned to do so by the natives' periodic practice of offering him a human female sacrifice.)

Indeed, it is often the human characters in such films who cause the reactions of the animals they encounter, hunt, or harass, which, of course, makes the human characters, as moral agents, morally responsible for the resulting destruction, injuries, and deaths their own behavior toward the “antagonists” sets in motion.

God questions Job. Source: wondersforoyarsa.blogspot,com

In Judaeo-Christian-Christian theology, God is a moral agent because he holds Himself morally responsible for the acts he performs. Although his behavior may be mysterious, at times, to human beings, since they lack his omniscience, He declares Himself “righteous” and “without sin,” and holds human beings, his creatures, morally responsible for their lack of faith and trust in Him and His self-characterization, expecting them to trust that He is the perfect moral agent he declares himself to be. It is a sin for them to characterize him as other than he has revealed Himself to them to be. Angels are also moral agents, with free will; some, rebelling against God, were cast into hell; those who remained faithful to Him reside in heaven with Him, as his messengers and servants.

From a Judaeo-Christian perspective, other supernatural agents are either evil in themselves (demons, the “fallen angels” who rebelled against God) or evil because they participate in evil (unrepentant sinners) or allow themselves to be empowered by evil supernatural agents (witches, vampires, werewolves).

From this point of view of this religious tradition, therefore, moral agents can be either supernatural or natural, although, among the latter category of such agents, only human beings, not animals or forces of nature, can be so classified.

An Essay on the Monstrous

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: Public domain

What is “monstrous”? Does the concept change, thereby altering the understanding of the meaning of the term; do merely the specific instances, the incarnations, so to speak, of the monstrous change; or is there a modification of both the understanding and the incarnations?

 

Source: Public domain

Certainly, the idea of the origin of monsters has changed. Once, monsters were considered omens, or signs warning of divine displeasure, or anger, concerning various types of behavior. Later, monsters were regarded merely as mistakes, or “freaks,” of nature. The origin of monsters, once supernatural, became natural. The hermaphrodite became Frankenstein's creature; the Biblical behemoth became the great white shark of Jaws. (Between these extremes, perhaps, as the great white whale, Herman Melville's Moby Dick.)

 

 Source: Public domain

Prior to the shift from a supernatural to a natural cause of monsters, there had been a shift in the way in which the world, or the universe, was understood. When God had been in charge of the universe He'd created, the universe and everything in it had had been meaningful; in God's plan, there was a place for everything, and everything was expected to stay in its assigned place. The universe was an orderly and planned place, because it had been created according to God's plan, or a design, and existence was teleological. Monsters were beings or forces that disrupted the orderliness of the universe, sought to disrupt God's plan, or showed disobedience to God's will, either by tempting others to sin or by giving in to sin (and sin itself was, quite simply, disobedience to God's will). Anything that differed form God's plan was a monster or was monstrous.

Source: Public domain

When the idea of an accidental, mechanical universe replaced the concept of a divinely created and planned universe, only nature existed (or, if God were to be granted existence, He was seen, first, as indifferent to the universe, as the Deists viewed him, or as irrelevant.) Offenses became unnatural actions, behavior which was not grounded in nature. Anything that “went against nature” was a monster or monstrous. Indeed, a naturalistic understanding of the universe is seen in the change in viewing monsters and the monstrous that is indicated in the etymology, or history, of the word “monster,” which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally referred to a “"divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign” and, only about the fourteenth century became understood as meaning “malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect.”

 Source: Public domain

Although some continue to believe that God exists, that He created the world and human beings, the latter in his own “image and likeness,” according to a plan and that the universe is consequently not only orderly, but purposeful, teleological, and meaningful, many others believe that God either does not exist or, if He does, His existence is inconsequential and that human beings must chart their own courses. In the former conception of the universe, wrongdoing is evil, and it is evil because it involves intentional disobedience to God's will; in the latter conception of the universe, wrongdoing is immoral because it is counter to that which is natural. In the former universe, the monstrous takes the form of demons and unrepentant sinners. In the latter universe, evil takes the form of “freaks” of nature, such as maladapted mutants, victims of birth defects, or the psychologically defective: grotesques, cripples, and cannibals.

Alternatively, in a naturalistic universe, monsters may be social misfits. Not only serial killers, sadists, and psychopaths, but also any group that is unconventional, or “other,” or is vilified or ostracized by the dominant social group (e. g., a community or a nation), examples of whom, historically, include homosexuals, Romani people, “savage” “Indians,” current or former martial enemies, cult members, and so forth.

 

Source: Public domain

Our line of inquiry leads, at last, a question and a conclusion. First, what happens when we run out of monsters? As our ideas of the monstrous change, monsters lose their monstrosity: homosexuals, Romani people, Native Americans, the nations that joined together as World War II's Axis powers, members of religious organizations once condemned as “cults” and “sects” have, today, become acceptable. Their members are no longer monsters. As the pool of candidates for monstrosity shrinks, what shall become of the very idea of monstrosity itself? Who will become the monsters of the future, when all the monsters of the present and the past are no longer considered monstrous?

 

Source: Public domain

 The answer to this question, it seems, is that we shall be left with the few actions that are universally condemned, that are unacceptable in all lands, everywhere. We might list among such behaviors incest, rape, premeditated murder that is unsanctioned by the state (that is not, in effect, condoned as a necessary wartime activity), child abuse, and, perhaps, cannibalism, which leaves, as monsters, the incestuous lover, the rapist, the murderer, the child abuser, and the cannibal. These could be the only monsters that remain in the future.

Source: Public domain

But they won't be. Here's why: horror is a type of fantasy fiction. As such, it includes characters, actions, places, causes, motives, and purposes that are unacceptable in more realistic fiction or drama. There is room for demons and witches, alongside werewolves and vampires, as well as the monsters embodying truly universally condemned behaviors and the people (or characters) who perform them. For this reason, horror fiction will never be without the monsters of old, even if, metaphysically, epistemologically, scientifically, and otherwise, they have long ago worn out their welcome. Fantasy has had, has, and always will have a home for them.

Meanwhile, however, the history of horror fiction has provided a way to identify threats that, rightly or wrongly, dominant societies have considered dangerous to their welfare or survival, and these threats, once they are seen as no longer threatening, have likewise shown what perceived menaces, in the final analysis, are not dangerous to social welfare, just as they identify the true menaces, the true monsters, that are condemned not just her or there for a time, but everywhere, at all times.

"Man Overboard" by Sir Winston Churchill: A Commentary

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 Deceptively simple, Sir Winston Churchill's 1899 short story “Man Overboard: An Episode of the Red Sea” is a true work of art. The story's technique is superb, highlighting the human condition through juxtapositions of pairs of contrasting extremes—comfort and misery, safety and danger, camaraderie and loneliness, accommodation and abandonment, security and vulnerability, hope and despair, joy and horror, civilization and nature, music and silence, light and darkness, ignorance and revelation—as a means of evoking the plight of humans as beings whose existence straddles two worlds, the natural and the spiritual, and who are as much out of water, as it were, in one as in the other.

The story opens in media res, presenting readers with an anonymous passenger aboard a mail steamer that is making its way through the Red Sea. After stepping outside the hot confines of the steamer's companion-house, where a concert is underway, the protagonist, listening to a raucous song, “The Rowdy Dowdy Boys,” seems in good spirits as he remembers “the brilliant and busy streets” he used to frequent years ago, perhaps in his younger, carefree days. His reverie is broken when the rail against which he leans, not having been tightly fastened to the ship, breaks, sending him plummeting into the sea.

A moment before, all was well; all was right with the world. He was safe, among the ship's passengers and crew, aboard a steamer which might be taken as a symbol of the human civilization of which the man overboard is a member. Civilization, as represented by the steamer, however, is not an infallible hedge against nature. Swept overboard, swept away from civilization and humanity, on his own in the sea, the nameless protagonist is alone, helpless, and vulnerable. 

 

One wants to escape company, to be alone, at times, but not for long. A smoke break is one thing; being alone in the sea, in the darkness, far from human society is quite another. “The Rowdy Dowdy Boys” brought fond memories to the protagonist's mind, while he was safe aboard the steamer, but the exploits of the boys of the song are no help to him now. Music, an artifact of civilized life, is replaced by the silence of the sea, in which only the man's sobs are now to be heard as he, and he alone, laments his fate. The song, which was “all the rage at all the music halls” only a few years ago, is meaningless now, its strains nothing more than an ironic and dispiriting reminder of the situation in which the man overboard now finds himself.

Irony is repeated throughout the story, at first stressing the difference between civilization, as it is encapsulated by the steamer, and nature, as it is represented by the sea. Aboard the steamer, there is an “accommodation-ladder”; there is a “companion-house”; there is a “concert”; there is a gathering of fellow “passengers”; such accommodations are not offered by the sea. In the ocean, there is only darkness, silence, and loneliness. The progress of the steamer highlights the gulf between civilization and nature, as the vessel puts more and more distance between itself and the man overboard. The steamer becomes less and less distinct and less and less significant, as the sea becomes the protagonist's sole and entire world—an alien and inhospitable world that exhausts him, causes him to despair, and leaves him, literally, without a prayer.

 

Left to his own devices, the man overboard soon realizes that he is no match for nature. The camaraderie of his fellow men is replaced by the indifference of nature. As the ship “dwindles” in the distance, its light is all but extinguished, and the protagonist is left alone in the darkness of the immense sea, a predicament in which neither shouting, swimming, praying, nor cursing avails anything. He is—and understands that he has been—“abandoned”; that he is alone; that he cannot survive; that he is helpless. He can do nothing, he realizes, and the discovery makes his brain reel. There is but one thing he can do: appeal to a power beyond nature, its Creator, for assistance, for salvation. He prays, but his words are clumsy and “incoherent,” sounds of madness.

Ironically, the man overboard feels “joy and hope,” and gratitude fills his heart, as he thinks the appearance of a faint light upon the dark surface of the sea may be the steamer returning for him. However, as the light withdraws, becoming increasingly smaller, almost as if it taunts him, he realizes that the ship is not returning, that he is alone, and “despair succeeds hope,” as he grapples with the significance of the tiny pinprick of light's vanishing in the distance and the darkness of the sea. Where, in desperation, he has prayed, he now, desperate again, this time, curses, but his curses avail him no more than had his prayers. He is alone; he is abandoned. Either God has not heard his prayer or has chosen not to answer the man's petition.

He finds that he cannot summon the will even to drown himself. His only recourse is to offer another prayer, and he begs, “O God! Let me die.” Ironically, he spies the fin of a shark fifty yards from him, and, as it approaches him, the narrator concludes, “His last appeal had been heard.”

The end of the story is terrifying for either of two reasons. It may convey the horror of living, as a human being, in a world that is indifferent by nature to one's existence. Alternatively, it may suggest that, if God exists, if He hears prayers, He may answer them, if at all, in a way that is, from a human viewpoint, utterly alien to such concepts as compassion, mercy, and love. In such a case, not only is the source of nature, of life itself, unconcerned about His creation, but He is also capricious. He might fefuse to answer a prayer for death that is uttered in despair, or He might elect to respond to a plea for deliverance from the anguish of hopelessness and absurdity in a way that brings terrible and horrific violence upon the distraught petitioner.

In the final analysis, Churchill's use of irony ends in a sense of astonishment that can be captured, if at all, only by a sentiment such as that of Moby Dick's Queequeg, who declares “de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.” Short though it is, “Man Overboard” is more than the hour's amusement Churchill described it as being when he shared the tale with General Ian Hamilton. Churchill's tale ranks with Stephen Crane's fabulous short story “The Open Boat” in its portrait of existential angst—and all in a space of 1,100 words or so.

 

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Analysis and Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --

This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you" -- here I opened wide the door; --

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word "Lenore!"

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word "Lenore!"

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore--

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --

"'Tis the wind and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore--

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered--not a feather then he fluttered--

Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before--

On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."

Then the bird said "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of 'Never--nevermore.'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,

But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

"Wretch," I cried, "Thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore,

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still, if bird or devil!--

Whether Tempest sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here 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."

 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken! --quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and Take thy form from off my door!"

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

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!

The opening stanza of this celebrated poem sets the tone, suggests that the narrator, or speaker, is uneasy about something; establishes the mood as a somber, gloomy one; and, of course, presents the rhyme scheme, which is both complex and calculatingly hypnotic:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."

The speaker tells us that he was half-asleep, after poring over “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” such as, today, one might find, perhaps, in the New Age section of a bookstore--books on the occult, otherworldly, and paranormal. The adjectives, coupled with the poem’s internal and end-rhymes and the repetition of certain images and ideas (especially the phrase “nothing more“), creates a sense of gloom that is pervasive throughout the initial poem, as the same technique, employed in the following stanzas will prove to be throughout the rest of the work.

In this first stanza, the knock at the door seems “gentle,” and the speaker supposes that it signifies “some visitor,” “only this and nothing more.” His supposition seems reasonable, but it does introduce the question as to why he might thing that it could be anything more than merely “some visitor”? (It is important to observe that the speaker not only asks the questions that are posed buy that he also answers them; both the questions and the answers to them are his own.) What else does he, perhaps, suppose the tapping, rapping at the door might signify and why? With this seemingly innocent, casual comment on the speaker’s part, especially considering that the hour is midnight--the so-called witches’ hour--and that he has been studying “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,“ an air of mystery and a hint of the malevolent enter the poem, which will become more and more pronounced.

In the next stanza, Poe, through the speaker, sets the scene, informing the reader that it was--and here’s another gloomy adjective “in the bleak December,” which is to say, the winter of the year, a season often associated with death. He reinforces the idea of death by using terms and images associated with it. Each coal in the fireplace is a “dying ember,” which is reflected upon the floor as if it were a “ghost.” It is obvious that death is much on the speaker’s mind--so much so, in fact, that he includes images of death in the description even of so mundane a phenomenon as a fire smoldering in his fireplace. The death of the fire is a slow one; the speaker marks the death of “each separate dying ember.” It is as if the fire represents the slow dying of his own hope or faith as well as his own sanity, which becomes more and more discernable as the poem progresses. He also tells the reader the motive for his having burned the midnight oil, poring over these “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” He was hoping to ease his grief at having suffered the death of his beautiful, beloved, whom he describes as “the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,” whom he recognizes is gone from his presence for ever, “nameless here for evermore.” He does not seek solace from his grief by reading the Bible or some other religious holy book, it should be observed; rather, he has sought to find “surcease of sorrow” in the study of “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore”:

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow; --vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.

So absorbed has the narrator been with his grief that, upon awakening to the tapping at his door, he is startled by the rustling of the curtains. The adjectives that he uses to describe the curtains’ rustling are those which he chooses; as such, they tell us about his own mental state, since, obviously cloth cannot experience emotions--it is he who feels and (using a Freudian term) projects his feelings onto the curtain, characterizing them as “sad” and “uncertain,” just as, earlier, he described the smoldering coals of his fire as “dying embers,” each of which reflected its “ghosts upon the floor.” The speaker’s word choice, as demonstrated in the adjectives that he uses in descriptions of the mundane objects and phenomena in his environment, together with his personifications of those objects and phenomena, do more to characterize him, showing his thoughts and feelings, than they do anything else. It is he who feels himself to be dying, not the fire, and it is he feels sad and uncertain, not the rustling curtains. The reader must wonder why the mere rustling of curtains should “thrill” the speaker, filling him with “fantastic terrors never felt before” and make himself stand, repeating, over and over, “"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--/ Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; --/ This it is and nothing more,” as if to convince himself of the truth of this explanation of the rustling curtains. The reader is apt, at this point, to wonder about the narrator. At best, he seems unduly frightened and worried; at worst, he seems to have a questionable grip on his sanity.

The effect of his repeating to himself that it is only “some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door” seems to calm him, as he says that “presently my soul grew stronger,” and he is able to end his hesitation about answering his visitor’s knock, although the hesitant manner in which he finally does answer, begging his visitor’s forgiveness and explaining why he is late in answering the knock, indicates that he remains frightened and apprehensive. When he finally does open the door, he sees “darkness there and nothing more.” The reader can imagine his shock and terror at finding no visitor there. He has told himself, again and again, that the tapping and rapping at his door and the rustling of the curtains at his windows have a simple, natural explanation and portend nothing more than the appearance of “some visitor.” Now, faced with “darkness . . . and nothing more,” that theory has been shown to be wrong.

His fear, as the next stanza shows, increases immensely as a result, and he next hypothesizes that the cause of the sounds he’s heard may be supernatural or otherworldly; he suspects that his “visitor” may have been the dead Lenore! However, when he goes back into his room and hears a louder tapping than that which he has heard before, this time coming from his window lattice, he attributes the sound to the effect of the wind. To explain the sounds that he hears, the speaker alternates between attributing the cause of those sounds to the supernatural or otherworldly and to the natural and mundane. He also seems to recognize that he is in an excited, frightened state of mind, because he tells himself, “Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; --‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’”

The speaker’s state of mind is conveyed by his behavior as much as by his speech. Now, he throws open the shutter to his window, as if to take by surprise whatever thing, natural or monstrous, that may wait outside his room, thereupon meeting the raven. The speaker personifies the bird, just as he has the fire and the curtains. It is a noble bird, which makes “not the least obeisance. . . but, with mein of lord or lady,” takes up its perch above the speaker’s door, as if the speaker’s room were its own and the speaker, rather than the bird, were the master of the house:

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter

In there stepped a stately Raven of the Saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mein of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door--

Perched upon my bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

The speaker is first amused by the solemnity of the “stately Raven”--notice the capital “R”; this is no mere raven, but The Raven--a god in avian plumage--but his amusement soon gives way to dread as he imagines that this “grim and ancient Raven” is a representative from the land of the dead, a lord from “the Night’s Plutonian shore.” Again, these are the speaker’s own thoughts. He continues to personify the bird that has entered his chamber, attributing not merely human but divine attributes to the bird, seeing it as an emissary of the dead, as a messenger sent, perhaps, by the Roman god of the dead, Pluto, himself.

When the anxious speaker asks the bird to tell him what it is called in the land of the dead, the bird answers, “Nevermore.” The reply seems to put the speaker’s fears to rest, for he muses upon the notion of a bird that can seemingly talk but whose reply is but a meaningless absurdity. Again, the speaker vacillates, hesitantly, back and forth between rational thought and mad imaginings:

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning-- little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as "Nevermore."

The speaker is quick to note that the bird’s vocabulary seems to consist of but this one word: “But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only/ That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.” Although, in response to the speaker’s question, the raven’s reply had borne “little relevancy,” it is interesting to note that the same response soon will come to have greater and greater significance for the speaker (who, after all, frames the questions to which the same reply is always to be made). Indeed, this single-word answer to his questions will come to terrify him, intensifying his despair of ever again seeing his “lost Lenore.”

The reader should remember, throughout the reading of the poem, that the raven answers always with the same word; it is the speaker who must frame the questions so that the bird’s response appears to be significant and appears, it might be added, to reinforce the speaker’s own preconceptions about the what, if anything, follows death. Only in the speaker’s mind is the raven The Raven, because it is he who poses questions to which “nevermore” may be regarded as being a significant response. As the speaker himself confesses, it is he who ponders possible meanings for the bird’s “croaking ‘Nevermore’”:

. . . Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore--

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

meant in croaking "Nevermore."

The speaker, at first, cannot discern whether the raven is sent from God or from the devil, whether it is a messenger from heaven or from hell. When he asks it whether there is “balm in Gilead,” or a salve that is capable of healing his anguished grief at Lenore’s death, the raven replies, not surprisingly to the reader, “Nevermore,” whereupon, not liking this answer, the speaker believes the raven must be a bird from hell, although one that is able to discern the future, and he asks--almost begs to know--whether he shall ever hold Lenore in his embrace again, whether, in short, there is a life after death, during which he and his beloved may be reunited:

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore --

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore --

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

Outraged at this reply (which he contrived to be the answer by the way that he formulated his question), the speaker orders the raven from his chamber, but the bird ignores his command, remaining on his perch above the door:

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!

Now, the same bird that the speaker has characterized variously as merely an “ebony bird,” as an emissary from “the Night’s Plutonian shore,” as a messenger sent by God or the devil, and as a demonic prophet, now regards it as the very embodiment of wisdom, for it occupies (not, in the mind of the narrator, by sheer chance, the reader may assume) “the pallid bust of Pallas,” or Athena, the goddess of wisdom.

Here, we take our leave of the speaker, leaving him obsessed with the idea that, in having (apparently subconsciously) answered his own questions about the likelihood of his attaining “surcease of sorrow” by being reunited with his “lost Lenore,“ he has determined, just as he had believed all along, that there is no existence beyond death, and that the proper attitude to take concerning the belief in the survival of death is a despairing disbelief. His “lost Lenore” was lost even before the raven appeared to him, to reinforce his beliefs that death is the end of life and that there is no hope in an existence beyond the grave.