The Raven: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

From the very opening of “The Raven,” it is never quite clear if the narrator is asleep, awake, or perhaps simply hallucinating. The ambiguity surrounding the raven’s arrival and whether the latter portion of the story occurs in a dream-like space or in the real world is stoked by the introduction of the tapping “visitor”:

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

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