In “The Raven”, by Edgar Allan Poe, a claim can be made that the speaker’s mental deterioration are linked to the raven. Firstly, to demonstrate that the speaker’s mental state has gotten worse over the course of the poem, in the end of the poem the speaker says that “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted nevermore” (lines 107-108). This shows that by the end of the poem the speaker is a husk of whatever it was he was before. Also, how this relates to the raven is that in the beginning the speaker was saying, “for evermore” (line 12), which shows an opposition between the speaker at the end of the poem saying nevermore and that in the beginning he was saying for evermore, which are the opposites of
