Upon hearing the “rapping” at his door he fights his paranoia by repeating, “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door. Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is and nothing more.”
Aside from the internal flow of his mind—which questions every element of the night—are overlaid sounds of constant thunder and squeaking doors. We are transported to the same couch our narrator sits on in his home, as he describes its velvet upholstery, and the lovely Lenore who used to sit upon it.
We are cemented in the same room again as he describes the haunting, intrusive raven who has perched outside his window, causing an uneasy feeling in our narrator—just as it would to any one else who was doomed to live in the ghostly bird’s shadow “evermore.”
THE RAVEN by Edgar Allan Poe, as stated on RadioTheatre’s website, is “the most famous poem in the English language.” And to honor such a title, voice actor Frank Zilinyi and a symphony of eerie sound effects join together to offer a rendition even Poe himself may shudder at, in this writer’s view.
