Death is an inevitable event anyone cannot escape from. Everyone at one point in life will experience death, whether it's facing your own or losing someone close to you. As human beings death is the most stressful and common experience an individual encounters. The majority of time common factors of psychological disturbances affected by death come from depression, mourning, and grief. Which are all natural responses, however it's usually during bereavement when factors of death play a strong role on one's psychological state of mind. Therefore, "The Raven"" by Edgar Allan Poe should be included in the North Bergen High School curriculum because the poem educates students about the psychological disturbances the lost of a loved one can cause.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, to talented actors David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold. Shortly, after Poe was born his father abandoned his family, his mother died of tuberculosis, and was orphaned before he was three years old. Poe struggled with poverty and against alcohol throughout his adult life. The majority of his childhood was spent with prosperous merchant godfather Allan Poe from Richmond, Virginia. Allan Poe provided schooling, he educated him in England, at the University of Virginia and West Point. Poe married Virginia Clemm on May 16, 1836. Poe's immediate influence was George Gordon and Lord Bryon, who he adapted wearing black clothing and melancholy subjects. John Allan blamed Bryon for Edgar's rebellious behavior. After being expelled from West Point he settled in Baltimore and began writing short stories. Then, in Richmond he became an influential editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. Afterwards Poe move to Philadelphia and again to New York, where he edited Burlington Gentleman's Magazine, the Evening Mirror, and the Broadway Journal, and published most of his most celebrated stories. His wife died of tuberculosis in 1847 and Poe died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore, Maryland .
