A Brief Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poem The Raven from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, as a classic poem of American Romanticism, profoundly depicts a man who has lost his spouse engaging in a dialogue with a mysterious raven late at night. The raven’s incessantly repeated “Nevermore” deepens the man’s despair and loneliness. This paper conducts a brief analysis of it from a psychoanalytic perspective: First, it analyzes the manifestation of the unconscious and repression in the poem; second, it explores the conflict of the narrator’s structures of personality, including the conflict between the id and the ego, and the influence and constraints of the superego; then, from the perspective of the death instinct and life impulse, it analyzes how the narrator, driven by the death instinct, continually indulges in the fear of life’s impermanence, simultaneously seeking hope under the push of the life impulse to showcase his struggle and pursuit; finally, it summarizes the insights brought by The Raven. The author believes that such an interpretation can not only help readers understand the poem’s connotation and Poe’s creative thoughts more deeply, but also inspire writers to pay more attention to characters’ unconscious psychology and psychoanalytic elements, thereby producing literary works of greater depth and artistry.