Final answer:
The speaker reacts poorly to the raven's 'Nevermore' because it echoes his despair and denies any hope of reuniting with his departed love, Lenore, thus intensifying his melancholy and sense of everlasting loss. Option d is the correct answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
The speaker in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven reacts poorly to the raven's response of “Nevermore” in stanzas 15-16 because each utterance of the word by the bird seems to confirm his deepest fears and intensifies his sense of loss and despair. The speaker first tries to understand the bird as a mere creature repeating what it learned from some 'unhappy master,' but he increasingly invests the raven's presence with his own sorrow and longing for his lost Lenore. The finality of the word “Nevermore” denies him any hope of relief or escape from his melancholy, suggesting that he will never be reunited with Lenore, leaving him with a burden of grief that feels everlasting.
The raven’s perch on the bust of Pallas Athena, a symbol of wisdom, may suggest that the truth it speaks, though painful, comes with the authority of knowledge and reason. Thus, the speaker’s poor reaction is not solely due to the word “Nevermore” itself but also to the grim certainty it imposes on his already haunted existence.
As the poem progresses, the speaker's interaction with the raven goes from one of curious annoyance to a frantic questioning of whether there is any hope to be found (“Is there balm in Gilead?”) to which the response is the same despairing 'Nevermore.' The dark and relentless repetition by the raven becomes symbolic of an inescapable truth, driving the man into further torment. This explanation provides clarity regarding the question posed about the speaker's reaction to the raven's repeated word.