As told in his life story, Edgar Allan Poe was a notoriously gloomy and depressed man who was always looking for love. When he finally found a marital relationship with his first cousin, she died, making his life even more tragic and empty. He often wrote about his despair over his lost love and used it to inspire many great works. Some might consider Poe to have pioneered the horror genre. His most famous work, The Raven, played an important role in the birth of this new type of entertainment. The Raven tells the story of a man heartbroken by his recently deceased lover, who is visited by a mysterious raven. The poem documents the speaker's feelings and curiosities about this raven who, shockingly enough, can speak. However, the Raven can only say one word, allowing the speaker to drive himself crazy. Through the use of symbolism and allusions in Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, Poe illustrates that an inability to accept the past will inevitably lead to the self-destruction of one's future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Poe uses symbolism to show the consequences that arise from rejecting or accepting finality. In the poem, the Raven is used to reflect the speaker's denial of the past and to show the self-destruction that accompanies it. While interacting with the Raven, the speaker quickly learns that the only thing he says is "never again". However, he goes on to “implore: Is there–is there any balm in Gilead?” to which the Raven responds “Never again”. He asks the Raven if there is hope in his future. Although he has already learned that the Raven will only respond with "never again", he still asks him questions that he wants a positive answer to, not accepting the Raven's response pattern. As if that weren't enough for him, almost immediately afterwards, he asks the Raven to "tell this sorrow-laden soul if, in distant Aidenn, she holds in her arms a holy maiden whom the angels call Lenore" to which the Raven predictably responds “never again.” The speaker allows this to infuriate him and depress him further. The speaker's refusal to accept the certainty of the Raven's response leads him to engage in this self-torture activity. The Raven reflects his inability to accept learned certainties from the past and this is supported by the way the Raven first appears. The poem begins with the speaker browsing through literature when he hears a knock at the door. At first he ignores the wiretapping, but then it happens again, which scares him. He assumes it's a visitor and goes to open the door but is only met with darkness. He then calls his deceased beloved Lenore, with the faint hope that it was she who was knocking at the door. When he goes inside, he now hears knocking near the window. He opens it and “into came a majestic raven from the holy days of old.” He did not pay him the slightest homage. The Raven forcibly and unwantedly enters her house, only after foolishly calling her Lenore dead. This further suggests that the Raven is a symbol of his rejection of the past. The depression of all speakers is due to the self-destructive activity of rejecting the facts of the past. It is only when he accepts that his Lenore will never be with him again that he is relieved of some of his sorrows. The speaker reflects on the nature of the Raven sitting on a velvet cushion, which reminds him of Lenore. This leads him to realize that "she won't press, ah,..