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.
Poe makes use of fire as a metaphor throughout "The Raven": bursts of warmth and light contrast with the dark and dreary mood of the piece as a whole. The chill of the chamber at the beginning of the story is established by the vivid description of "dying embers" wringing their "ghosts upon the floor," and the imagery of a dying fire predicts the themes of grief and death—and the possibility of an afterlife, whether classical or biblical—to come.
On two other occasions, Poe uses fire as a metaphor for the inner life of an individual. When the narrator returns to his chamber after searching the hallway outside his room for whoever was tapping on his door, he recounts:
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
The strength of his grief as he searches for Lenore in the gloom and retreats back, defeated, is rendered all the more visceral by its depiction as a burning flame. That Poe would invoke fire here is particularly notable given the extent to which he relies on the imagery of darkness just prior in his description of the empty hall—the narrator himself, burning in anguish, is the only light in his chamber.
Later in the story, when the Raven arrives, the strength of its gaze upon the narrator is also described in terms of fire:
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
to the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
Amidst the cold, dark December night, once more the metaphor of fire is used to make a feeling—in this case, the feeling of being subjected to the Raven's stare—particularly striking.
