The speaker does not move away from the horrible void. Try to act reasonably in a situation where reason provides no defense. Even if the protagonist does not fully respond to the heroic demands of the tragedy by fighting against his destiny, he does not try to escape it either. He faces his tormentor firmly, a demonic emblem (to quote Poe's italicized description from "The Philosophy of Composition") of "Doleful and Endless Memory." Trapped and condemned, the protagonist nevertheless explains what it means to endure the limits of psychological suffering. We cannot say whether Poe himself fully shared those agonies, but however rational the composition of "The Raven" truly was, the wellsprings of human pain and loss that fueled it were enormously deep and authentic. As Walt Whitman wrote of his own work, “He who touches this touches a man.” Few poems have touched so many readers as deeply as “The