The Raven By Edgar Allan Poe

The first short story to be summarized is “The Black Cat”. In the beginning of the story, we learn that the unnamed narrator is in jail and going to die the very next day and wants to set his story straight. From the day he was born, he loved animals and has lots of them. He expresses that taking care of his animals and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. He gets married and finds out that his wife loves animals just as much as he does. Out of all the different animals he has, his favorite is an all-black and extremely smart cat named Pluto. The narrator has a drinking problem and one night when he came home drunk, he turns on the cat. He thinks that the cat is trying to avoid him and he grabs the cat and cuts out one of his
The poem starts out on a dreary December night when the unnamed narrator is reading an old book. While the narrator is reading this old book, he hears a tapping at the door to his room. He tells himself that it is just a visitor and that he waits for tomorrow because he cannot find any ease in his sorrow over the death of Lenore. He is frightened by the curtains rustling and decides that it must be a late visitor. As he heads to the door he asks for forgiveness of the visitor because he had been napping. However, when he opened the door, he sees no one, hears no one, except for the word “Lenore” an echo of his own words. When he goes back to his room, he again hears a tapping and he tells himself that it must be the wind outside his window. When he opens the window, a raven enters and perches “upon a bust of Pallas” above the door. The narrator asks for its name and the raven replies, “Nevermore”. The narrator tells the raven to leave him until tomorrow like the rest of his friends due to being in such deep sorrow and the raven again replies, “Nevermore”. The narrator is startled by this and he says that the raven must have learned this word from someone whose luck was not so good and it caused him to repeat the word over and over. The narrator then sits in front of the raven and ponders about the meaning of the word, while the raven sits and stares at him sitting in the chair Lenore used to always sit in. He starts to ask
This story takes place in New York around the cholera epidemic in the summer of 1832. During this summer, the narrator decides to take a trip for two weeks to the Hudson River, to visit a relative. There, the two men observe the enormous devastation that the epidemic has caused. They hear the news that one of their friends has died from this terrible illness. The narrator’s host tries to cheer up his friend. The host is a very rational person and he doesn’t let his fears get the best of him. He also is a very calming force in the narrator’s life as he is very upset because of the epidemic. One day during the visit, the narrator is reading a book near the window that is looking out upon the Hudson River. His attention was focused on the cholera epidemic, and then he looks up from his book and sees a frightening sight in the distant hills. He sees an enormous creature that is larger than anything that he had ever seen. Its trunk was about seventy feet long, and has two tusks surrounded by a huge bulk of black hair. The creature also had two pairs of wings that are nearly one hundred yards in length and all covered in thick metal scales. The frightening monster opened its jaws and locks them shut, roaring loud as it disappears at the bottom of the hill. The narrator fears that this monster is coming to claim his life. Later on that evening, the narrator really wants to tell his relative about him seeing the monster, but he