What is the purpose of the stanza?

Question

example: The purpose of this stanza is to develop a general time and place - setting - for 'The Raven'. In this stanza, the month is identified as a cold one and an unsavory one. Additionally, a fire is dying as a person seeks to grieve through reading a book. He is grieving over the loss of his love, Lenore. At this point, because it's so early in the narrative poem, no real tension - stress - has been developed, but we can begin to wonder over how the character will cope with the loss of his love. After all, he does refer to her as a "rare and radiant" maiden.

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy
beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Answer 1

The purpose of this stanza is to show the speaker's intense reaction to the presence of the raven and to further develop the theme of grief and loss. The speaker addresses the bird as a "bird or fiend" and demands that it leave. The use of strong and dramatic language, such as "shrieked" and "tempest," emphasizes the speaker's emotional state. The repetition of the phrase "Nevermore" by the raven emphasizes the despair and hopelessness of the speaker, reinforcing the theme of grief and loss.