How do I write a critical analysis of the Poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe?

One place you might
begin would be to unpack the symbolism of the raven itself.Throughout the poem, the narrator
comes to believe that the raven is many different things.First, he is taken aback by the raven's
demeanor; the bird, apparently, behaves with "mien of lord or lady" and doesn't seem
to concern himself with paying "obeisance" or respect to the narrator.Is this merely
the way such a bird might behave or is it indicative of something more?

Then, the raven flies up and perches on a bust of Athena, or "Pallas."The
narrator soon decides that the bird is simply repeating the one word it knows:
"Nevermore."He assumes that the raven once belonged to some hopeless person who
uttered the word frequently, and this is how the raven learned it.This would make the bird
pretty typical, with nothing special about him.Yet, he perches on a bust of the Greek goddess of
wisdom.Is the bird wise, and are his answers meaningful?Or is his lack of intelligence
juxtaposed with the intelligence represented by the goddess?

At one point,
the narrator claims that the raven was sent by God to distract him from his sorrow.At another,
he wants to know if the raven can tell him of some silver lining in death, some way that he
might, once again, see .At still another, he calls the raven a "devil" and insists
that the bird has only come to torture him.Ultimately, the narrator says that his "soul
from out that [raven's] shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted €“€“
nevermore!"He feels that he will never again exist without the raven's presence and
influence over him.A good literary analysis would need to address the raven's symbolism: what IS
he?Is he just a bird, about which the narrator merely speculates?Or, is he actually sentient and
there to help or hurt the narrator?