As the narrator speaks with the Raven, it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that the unsettling bird will offer no useful response. Nevertheless, the narrator continues to ask—and practically interrogate—the Raven as to the fate of his lost Lenore. The narrator becomes increasingly desperate as the night continues:
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
By this point in the poem, the narrator has no reason to expect any other response from this bird who has only ever said “Nevermore.” His anguish over the Raven’s lack of response instead highlights the central metaphor of the story: the interactions between the narrator and the Raven, in the form of a one-sided dialogue, function allegorically as an extended metaphor for the illogical and indeed desperate nature of grief. Is the narrator going mad, or is he just heartbroken? The incessant questions that the narrator directs at the Raven about his “radiant Lenore” or “lost Lenore,” questions the narrator asks despite there being no possibility of any sort of relief from the bird, represent the lengths to which one may go to find solace after the loss of a loved one. The process of grieving can be a strange and intensely difficult undertaking, and Poe thus constructs “The Raven” with strange and uneasy qualities—the unsettling nighttime setting, the supernatural bird—that highlight the intensity of the narrator’s grieving. As the narrator shrieks in the above quote, the Raven's beak feels as though it has pierced his heart—a physical manifestation of his emotional pain, and further evidence for the metaphorical power of the Raven's presence.
