York: Harcaurt, Brace & World, 1969, p. 71) has a brief dis- cussion of Poe’s “The Black Cat” as the source for Wright’s symbolic, ironic inversion of the white cat in Native Son. McCall only mentions, however, the influence o f “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and this point deserves exploration. Bigger Thomas, Wright’s protagonist, first smothers the young girl, Mary Dalton. He then takes her body to the furnace room of the Dalton home, cuts off her head with a hatchet, and stuffs her body into the furnace. The parallels are evident in the double mur- der in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”: the first victim is strangled and her body stuffed into the chimney, the second victim’s head is severed with a razor. Later in the novel the reasons for Wright’s use of Foe become more apparent. In both “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Nutiue Son there are sensational and short-sighted newspaper accounts of the murders. In the early series of articles in Poe’s story, the mur- derer is assumed to be a man-multilingual and physically powei- ful. And by means of a later, rather incidental article, Dupin discovers that the real murderer is a missing orangutan. In Native Son, the murderer is described by Chicago newspapers a s an animal: “‘He looks exactly like an ape!’ exclaimed a terrified young white girl who watched the black slayer being loaded onto a stretcher after he had fainted. Though the Negro killer’s body does not seem compactly built, he gives the impres- sion of possessing abnormal physical strength. . . His lower jaw protrudes obnoxiously, reminding one of a jungle beast. All in all, he seems a beast utterly untouched by the softening influences of modern civilization. . . He acted like an earlier missing link in the human species” [New York: Harper & Row, p. 2601. Poe’s murderer, then, an ape, is assumed by the authorities to be a man; Wright’s murderer, a man, is assumed to be an ape. It is through this ironic inversion of Poe’s story that Wright reinforces one of the central themes of his novel- the white man’s failure to recognize the essential humanity of the black man and the desperation to which he has been driven. Thus through a knowledge of Poe, Wright’s irony can be fully appreciated. Linda T. Prior, Detroit, Michigm Classical Raven Lore and Poe’s Raven Several reasons for Poe’s choice of bird for the harbinger of despair in “The Raven” are manifest: ravens can be taught to speak, they have a reputation for following armies and relishing death, and their dark plumage suggests melancholy and gloom. More subtle and ironic significance, however, can be found in the curious traditions which have accrued to this dark bird, associating him with wisdom, deviousness, and messenger service. In Hebrew folklore the raven, originally white, was turned black in punishment for not returning to the ark when Noah sent him out to check the flood conditions. His failure to return when he learned the waters were receding was attributed to bestial appetite, for which he was constrained ever after to feed on carrion. In Norse mythology Odin possessed two ravens, Hugin and Mugin, representing the mind and the will and thus symbolic of intelligence and power. Classical mythology has Pallas, the embodiment of wisdom, as the raven’s original master, a tradition Poe evidently drew upon in perching his raven on her white bust. And in Ovid (Metammphoser, Book 11), the raven again was white before Apollo made it black for tattling about his beloved’s unfaithfulness. Like Apollo’s, Poe’s raven is all too eager to deliver his unwelcome message of unfaithfulness-this time of the ultimate unfaithfulness of death. But the tradition most strikingly appropriate to Poe’s poem is that which invests the raven as the symbol of hope. The sound the raven makes which we transcribe as **caw”the Greeks and Romans transliterated into the Greek word “cras,” meaning “tomorrow.” The raven represented hope, then, for all the reasons that “tomorrow” suggests hope o r gives reason for optimism. Although this association of the raven with hope was not widespread-neither Pliny nor Ovid mentions it- Seutonius makes it in Twelve Caesars, a common school text and one very likely used by Poe. It is as a bearer of hope that Poe’s persona initially greets his raven, as bringing “Respite, respite and nepenthe / From this memory of Lenore.” The bird, however, speaks not with the Greek word “cras,” “tomor- row,” but the exact reverse, “Nevermore,” the message not of hope but of despair. Though the persona first thinks the bird has been “taught” mechanically to repeat his single word, a pattern of sense soon emerges, the message that his lover’s death is total and final, without hope even of reunion after death in the “distant Aidenn.” It is difficult to believe that this inversion is mere coincidence; the specific relevance of the words as well as the patness of the reversal are simply too logical and appropriate. Rather, the raven’s value as a symbol of hope and the ironic reversal of that value seem central to the con- ception of the poem, certainly to the choice of the particular word PIX’S raven speaks. In the course of the poem, the raven develops and modifies this and its other associations, becoming more and more a private symbol, more and more a dream o r hallucinatory figure generated by the persona’s emotional bank- ruptcy, increasingly symbolizing private spiritual dryness rather than personal lamentation for a specific loss. As such, the raven figure has often been taken as a contrivance with a significance largely unearned, ultimately without objective correlative. But the private symbol is confirmed and contained by an objective logic and system of reference. The traditional associations of the raven serve to broaden the ironic dimension and range o f appli- cation o f the private symbol, improving its logic and consistency, enriching its significance, raising it above a mere macabre hallucination. John F. Adams, Washington State Univmsity Devil Lore in “The Raven” So much emphasis has been placed upon Poe’s essay of “The Philosophy of Composition’‘ with its carefully crafted analysis of the creation of “The Raven” that other ways of looking at the poem are generally neglected. I wish to offer here an expli- cation of the folklore context in the poem which gives perhaps a better reason for Poe’s selecting the raven as the bird of ill omen than that which his essay suggests. For it is the folkloric connotation of the raven as the Devil’s bird and as one of the forms he takes upon occasion for convenience which makes clear exactly why the young man will never again see his lost Lenore. It’s not simply that she is dead. It is that he has damned himself. It is no mistake that the month is “bleak December” rather than an equally dreary November. The forces of darkness are never more powerful than during the high holy days of the Christian year, and December, with its share of the twelve days of Christmas, ranks foremost. The mention of “each separate dying ember [which] wrought its ghost upon the floor,” is reminiscent of Coleridge’s “Christabel” in which other embers reflect the presence of evil in much the same way. The “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore” may very well be books of black magic which the protagonist studies in order to raise the ghost of his beloved, and so attain “surcease of sorrow.” In his semi-somnolent state it does not occur to him that he has actually raised something by his endeavors, for he mistakes the odd tapping for that of a midnight visitor. The darkness and silence he meets when he opens his door lead him in to strange musings, not in the least lightened by his own whisper of “Lenore?” It evolves, of course, that the tapping is at his window, through which a raven steps into his room and at once takes its position on a bust o f Pallas. That the bird should perch on the representation of the goddess of wisdom is suitable, for the protagonist had been seeking mastery of dangerous knowledge. At first the young man is somewhat amused by his visitor. The first ominous indication arises from the student’s ah-poor-me comment that the raven will no doubt leave just as all others have: the bird states, “Nevermore.” Further, the student admits his Hopes have all fled; this is what happens to those who commit suicide, and it is the only unpardonable sin in Christian belief: the total loss of Hope. In such a state he is ready to be claimed by the Devil. That repeated “Nevermore” with its implications of hopeless eternity has a sobering effect on the protagonist. For the moment he continues to find some rational explanation for the aptness of the single word to his situation. But it becomes clear that this is no ordinary raven “whose fiery eyes burned into [the student’s] bosom core.” In folklore, the Devil‘s eyes 53