The raven in this poem is very mysterious for a number of reasons. First, the fact that he appears to rap at the narrator's door at midnight is both odd and unsettling, especially considering that both ravens and midnight are associated with death (and the narrator just lost his lover, Lenore, to death). When the narrator goes to answer the door, no one is there.
Next, he hears a tapping at the window, and...
The raven in this poem is very mysterious for a number of reasons. First, the fact that he appears to rap at the narrator's door at midnight is both odd and unsettling, especially considering that both ravens and midnight are associated with death (and the narrator just lost his lover, Lenore, to death). When the narrator goes to answer the door, no one is there.
Next, he hears a tapping at the window, and when he opens it, the raven steps in with "mien of lord or lady" (line 40). So, the raven conducts himself like a person of noble bearing, possessing a "grave and stern decorum" (44). The bird speaks only one word: "'Nevermore.'" At first, the speaker assumes that the bird's master must have lived through a great deal of tragedy, and thus the raven learned the word because he heard it spoken so many times.
However, the longer the bird stays, the more the narrator seems to think him a "'devil'" (85), and he imagines the bird to be a messenger sent from the land of death to tell him that he will never again see his lost love, Lenore. By the end of the poem, the bird is still there, "never flitting, still is sitting" (97). It appears that he will remain forever to torment the narrator.
Therefore, whether or not the bird is sentient is a mystery. Whether he is simply a bird or actually a messenger or prophet of death is also a mystery. His continued presence in the speaker's study is also a mystery. Finally, the morbid affect the raven has on the speaker is mysterious: the narrator feels that his "soul from out that shadow [...] / Shall be lifted - nevermore!"
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