Analysis of The Crow (the poem, itself, and its symbolism) The Crow was one of the most recognizable works of American poetry for its haunting musical quality. It is also known for its hypnotic sound and even tone of melancholy. Poe needed to create a masterpiece that people would remember him by. He used all his best writing talents in his poetry; repetition, parallelism, internal rhyme, alliteration and assonance, so as to remain imprinted in the memory of all people for countless generations. In his essays, Poe defended beauty and pleasure as the primary concerns of poetry and was strongly against excessive length. (Funk & Wagnalls, 104) Therefore, he chose his yet-to-be-written poem to be approximately 100 lines. It is very likely that "midnight" in "December" could perhaps be New Year's Eve, a date that most people connect with change and rejuvenation. Once the “visitor” continued to knock on his door, he decided to apologize and open the door. Only darkness awaited him. Her mind was so troubled by memories of her lost love, that for a moment she thought that maybe, just maybe, the person behind her door could have been the spirit of Lenore. He returned to his room, increasingly saddened by his loss. The scholar heard the sound of banging again, but now he thought it came from the grate of the window. When he opened the window, a raven “with the appearance of a lord or lady” strutted into his room, head held high, as if it had no respect for the narrator. But that the bird entered is absurd, because birds are very clumsy when they walk, while they are graceful in flight. As the scholar watches the bird try to walk, he is tricked, or tricked, into enjoying himself. Poe created the personification of the Raven because the bird had a “severe decorum of…face.” The narrator decides to ask the bird's name, believing it to be a messenger from his poem, The Raven, which united his philosophical and aesthetic ideas. In this Poe was able to vividly portray the mental anguish of others because he had endured much suffering and pain in his life. (Porges, 157) About the poem The Raven, Charles Baudelaire had this to say: It is truly a poem about the insomnia of despair; he lacks nothing: neither the fever of ideas, nor the violence of colours, nor sickly reasoning, nor chattering terror, nor even the bizarre joy of suffering which makes him more terrible. (World Literature Criticism, 2751). The Raven is melancholy, dark, and haunting: all of Poe's best tones, all rolled into one. This is probably why The Crow is one of his best-known works. It was made into an episode of The Simpsons, along with another of his works, The Tell-Tale Heart. It has been made into countless films, many of which starred the well-known actor Vincent Price. All in all, The Raven is one of Poe's best-known works because he brought out all of his best talent as a writer when he sat down to create his monster and masterpiece, The Raven.