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Although the poem’s speakers don’t explicitly locate where their dialogue is taking place, the reader can infer that they all belong to the same community. When the chorus expresses concern about Guy de Vere and the loss he has suffered, they also give voice to their town’s funerary traditions. They insist that when someone dies, it’s necessary to perform the proper grief and burial rites. These rites are in place for the good of the community as a whole, since they ensure that community members have structured support in difficult times. For his part, however, Guy de Vere rejects the chorus’s concern and accuses them of not caring for Lenore when she was alive. Since we readers don’t have more context, it’s difficult to evaluate the validity of Guy de Vere’s complaints. For all we know, his representation of the community as fundamentally uncaring could be accurate. On the other hand, his frustration with the chorus could also be understood as a projection of his own unacknowledged grief. But regardless of the evident antagonism that exists between them, it’s clear that Guy de Vere and the chorus all live in the same vicinity and that they know each other well.

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