The speaker does not turn away from the horrible void. He tries to act reasonably in a situation where reason provides no defense. Even if the protagonist does not fully meet the heroic demands of tragedy by fighting against his destiny, he does not seek to escape it either. He resolutely faces his tormentor, a demonic emblem (to quote Poe's own italicized description in "The Philosophy of Composition") of "Sad and Endless Memory." Trapped and condemned, the protagonist nevertheless expresses what it means to endure the limits of psychological suffering. We cannot say whether Poe himself fully shared these anxieties, but as rational as the composition of "The Raven" was, the sources of human pain and loss that fueled it were extremely deep and genuine. As Walt Whitman wrote of his own work: “He who touches it touches a man.” Few poems have touched so many readers as deeply as “The