Wednesday, July 3, 2013

How does the narrator respond in "The Raven" to his first encounter with the raven?

The raven flies into the speaker's chamber in the 6th stanza; and he first responds to the raven in the 7th stanza.  In this stanza, the first line states, "Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling."  By this, the speaker means that at first the raven turns his sad, mournful face into a smile.  After this initial response, and still in the same stanza, his next response is to question who this raven is and why it came. 
After this first reaction, the speaker starts to see the raven in a different light; it becomes more evil than good. 

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