Explain the conflict in "The Raven" by Poe.

The main conflict in the poem The Raven,
by Edgar Allan Poe, is the reality of the narrator versus what is going on in
his mind. The poem is about the inability of letting go of the past. It is also about
how we, as humans, tend to associate symbols, sounds, and ideas with the emotions that
we feel at one particular moment.

Yet, in The
Raven, the more the narrator tries to get rid of the memories of his lost
love, the more he holds on to them, making it impossible for him to move
on.

The narrator is a man who is isolated during the cold
and dark month of December in, what seems to be, a cottage. He is obviously in mourning
and going through a period of deep grief.

In the middle of
his sadness he sees a black raven, who enters his place, and reminds him more of the sad
memory of the loss of the love of his life. He compares the raven to many different
things, but he certainly personifies it as a harborer of bad news. The bird is
seemingly quite comfortable inside the cottage, and does not leave. This is interpreted
by the narrator as an allegory to the memories that will not leave him
either.

Therefore, this conflict between forgetting versus
remembering and letting go versus keeping alive the memory, is what composes the main
problem in the poem.