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Where and when do the events of the poem take place?

The events of the poem take place late in the year, in "bleak December" (line 7), and at "midnight" (1).  Both midnight and December are often symbolic of death, especially in works by Edgar Allan Poe, a symbolism that is appropriate here because it very much fits the poem's themes.  December can be representative of death because it is the last month of the year; it marks the death of the year in that way.  Midnight is similar because it marks the death of the day.


In terms of where the poem takes place, the speaker is sitting in his home in a room that seems to be, perhaps, a study or den.  It is full of books, and the narrator sits reading one of his "volume[s] of forgotten lore" (2).  In addition, there is a bust of Pallas Athena on which the raven perches when he flies into the room (41).  Further, it seems unlikely that the narrator would be sitting in a bedroom since the chamber has a door that opens to the outside.

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