Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (104 page)

3
(p. 449)
My name is Arthur Gordon Pym.... Edgarton New Bank, as it was formerly called:
Pym’s full name has suggested, to many, a similarity to that of Edgar Allan Poe, a suggestion presumably supported by using Edgarton for Edgartown, an actual town on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Some readers have also discerned
imp
in a transposition of
Pym,
a suggestion that may carry more significance than some have thought, as
imp
derives from word roots that mean “graft,” “scion,” or “growth” (see also note 49, below). Pym’s own immaturity may be indicated in the name of his friend Augustus, introduced later in this paragraph. However much young Barnard may act to the contrary at times, his first name hints of neoclassical reason and order, in that it has the same root as “Augustan,” which is often a synonym for “neoclassic” or “classic”; the name thus connotes balance, reason, order—all of which eventually vanish in this book. Once he is gone, the situations in the novel become more and more incredible.

4
(p.450)
thinking that the wines and liquors he had drunk had set him entirely beside
himself:
Intoxication as precursor to fantastic adventure links
Pym
to “Tales of the Folio Club” and to some of Poe’s later tales. The late October night also creates affinities with works like “Ulalume: A Ballad,” “King Pest,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Gold-Bug,” “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” Like “King Pest” and “Tarr and Fether,” a decided liquor-ish atmosphere pervades
Pym.

5
(p. 453)
I tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body of my fallen companion:
This is the first of a series of incidents in which what seems to be a supernatural visitation is soon revealed to have natural, if unusual, causes. The demonic theme, for example, recurs when the mutineer cook is likened to a demon or other supernatural being; nevertheless, his human, if not humane, identity cannot be ignored. Poe was nothing if not adept in creating such ambiguities, offering apparent supernaturalism to entice readers eager for horrifics, but offering as well a reasonable psychological underpinning for the horrors, to appeal to more sophisticated readers. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Gold-Bug,” and “The Black Cat” exemplify similar techniques.

6
(p.456)
The wound in my neck, although of an ugly appearance, proved of little real consequence, and I soon recovered from its effects:
The circumstances of the two youths, especially those affecting Pym, are of sufficient incredibility to test readers’ acumen in distinguishing fiction from fact or reliability from unreliability.

7
(p.457)
my own enthusiastic temperament and somewhat gloomy although glowing imagination:
In sketching his own manic-depressive state, Pym gives another example of the pervasive themes in the novel.

8
(p. 457) a
partial interchange of character:
The merging of characteristics makes Pym and Augustus, and subseqeuently Pym and Peters, doubles after the manner of the two William Wilson’s, the Usher twins, Dupin and Minister D__ (in “The Purloined Letter”), and many other characters in the Poe canon.

9
(p. 458)
indulging my desire of travel:
Pym’s eagerness to “travel” may involve mental-emotional voyaging as well as literal traversing of sea and land. That his travels take him to remote regions represents journeying into increasingly fantastic regions in his mind.

10
(p. 462)
“I suppose you can’t tell how long you have been buried”:
Beginning here, we find recurrent allusions to or motifs of live burial, a favorite theme with Poe. Premature burials in many of his tales and poems symbolize descents into depths of the self.

11
(p. 462)
the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia:
Amer ican explorers Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) led an expedition westward to the Columbia River. Poe might have known various published chronicles of these explorations. These would naturally have provided him knowledge of travel-book methods, as would another account by renowned American writer Washington Irving,
Astoria; Or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains
(1836), which Poe reviewed in the
Southern Literary Messenger
(January 1837); the first two serial installments of
Pym
also appeared in that magazine. The title of Irving’s book—with
Anecdotes, Enterprise,
and
Beyond—
allows for as open-ended a work as
Pym
turns out to be. Many other travel books in Poe’s day were similarly structured.

12
(p. 463)
I was oppressed with a multitude of gloomy feelings:
This paragraph and the more extended one that follows contribute to Pym’s dreams or fantasies about death and decay, horror, gloom, and solitude, which intermittently are actualized in some one or another episode. When, over the next few paragraphs, Tiger’s identity is revealed, however, we are treated to a vignette of time-honored “explained supernaturalism,” so to speak, featured in many earlier Gothic novels. Pym’s melancholy outlook anticipates that of another popular boy-hero in American fiction, Huckleberry Finn.

13
(p. 464)
I stood, naked and alone, amid the burning sand-plains of Zahara:
Scenic effects in this paragraph may be likened to those in “Silence—A Fable” or “The Valley of Unrest.” The barrenness of the Sahara Desert mirrors the bleakness of Pym’s emotions.

14
(p. 466)
I should swoon amid the narrow and intricate windings of the lumber:
“Lumber” in this context means any stored articles, whether or not they consist of actual wood. Pym’s crawling through this troublesome pathway to find Augustus symbolizes an attempt to reestablish identity, since both youths in this early portion of the novel form a composite self.

15
(p.468)
Upon a closer scrutiny, I came across a small slip of what had the feeling of letter paper:
Discovery of the note parallels the technique in many older Gothic novels of finding an old manuscript or of distinguishing handwriting on a wall. The information found often acts as a catalyst to additional anxieties or physical dangers for the protagonist(s), or it may relieve their terrors.

16
(p. 474)
I felt myself actuated by one of those fits of perverseness which might be supposed to influence a spoiled child:
Pym’s perverseness aligns him with many other Poe characters, notably, perhaps, the narrator in “The Black Cat,” although these are by no means the only perverse characters in the Poe canon.

17
(p. 475)
He had brought with him a light in a dark lantern:
A dark lantern has metal walls, with slides that can be opened or closed, depending on the need for light. Here such a lantern also symbolizes Pym’s as yet incomplete knowledge of the situation on the ship. The murderer in “The Tell-Tale Heart” uses a dark lantern to aid in his wicked activities.

18
(p. 480)
Dirk Peters
...
of the tribe of Upsarokas.... I have been thus particular in speaking of Dirk Peters:
Many hypotheses have been offered regarding Peters’s significance. His name combines “knife” (a dirk is a long, straight dagger) and “rock” (from the Latin word
petra),
as well as sex (the dirk suggests an erect penis) and Saint Peter, and he proves to be the savior of Augustus and Arthur in more than one situation. His tribe would actually be Absaroka (a Native American tribe also known as the Crow). In his features and actions he anticipates the title character in “Hop-Frog.” Like much else in
Pym,
Peters seems at times to change abruptly from gentle to savage. Consistent with such shiftings, Peters also seems to embody supernaturalism. His headpiece, which merges the hair of a type of spaniel with that of a grizzly, emphasizes the uncertainties of domestication and wildness in his makeup.

19
(p. 486)
Many years elapsed, however, before I was aware of this fact:
A question arises: How did Pym gain this information long after the incident? Peters may have enlightened him, but the indefiniteness is another ambiguity in the novel.

20
(pp. 489—491 ) A
proper stowage cannot be accomplished in a careless manner.... I found myself comfortably situated for the present:
The lengthy attention given to stowage as chapter VI opens may be in part Poe’s attempt to create an air of realism after the sensationalism that precedes the passage. Since the description incorporates inaccuracies—for example, that casks are screwed so firmly that they lose their ordinary shape—Poe may have been insinuating a joke into apparent factuality.

21
(p. 494)
Simms ... Augustus and myself:
These names may connect to actual persons Poe knew or knew about—for example, William Gilmore Simms (1806—1870), a Southern author; Horace Greeley (1811-1872), a well-known New York newspaperman; and Richard Parker, a notorious eighteenth-century mutineer. About others one may only conjecture. Interestingly, the cook’s name, Seymour (“see more”), may again impart a hint of supernaturalism to his demonic character.

22
(p. 501)
The streak across the eye was not forgotten, and presented a most shocking appearance:
Since Pym earlier had felt as if he were buried alive, his return as a simulated corpse deftly maintains motifs of deception, apparent supernaturalism, and death—all of which will resurface. Pym’s gruesome masquerading is reworked in “ ‘Thou Art the Man.”’

23
(p. 516)
any of the thousand chances which afterward befell me in nine long years:
The “nine long years” may bring the time from 1827, when Pym’s adventures commenced, to 1836, just before publication of the two installments of
Pym
in the
Southern Literary Messenger.
Poe as author may be creating his own kind of deception, or he may simply have had an attention lapse when he composed the “Note” that concludes the book.

24
(p. 516)
The vessel in sight was a large hermaphrodite brig, of a Dutch build, and painted black, with a tawdry gilt figure-head: Hermaphrodite brig
is an actual nautical term for a two-masted vessel with a square-rigged foremast and fore and-aft-rigged mainmast. However,
hermaphrodite
also refers to plants or ani mals with both male and female reproductive organs, and such dualism may fit well with Pym’s own psycho-physical constitution. Male though he is, he rep eatedly gives way to an emotionalism ordinarily considered a feminine trait in Poe’s era. What seems to be his maturing or adventuring in fantasy to a point where he can merge with a female force, depicted at the conclusion of the novel, may also be anticipated in this term. Thus
Pym
takes rank with such works as Poe’s tales about women, most notably “The Fall of the House of Usher”—where the narrator’s entering the house that looks like a head and confronting the Usher twins may symbolize facets of masculinity and femininity in his self—or the poems “To Helen,” “The Raven,” and “Ulalume,” which highlight similar combinations.

25
(p. 523)
the good effect of the shower-bath in a case where the patient was suffering from
mania a potu: Mania a
potu
is a Latin phrase referring to madness resulting from overindulging in alcohol. Pym’s analogy maintains the liquor-ish aura of the novel. We might ask at this point: Is this novel a drunkard’s fabrication? The visions that affect the sailors suggest such possibilities, although they may also signal that Pym is journeying further into the interior of his self. Perhaps the repeated murders that kill the physical bodies of many characters deepen this context.

26
(p. 531)
a carboy containing nearly three gallons of excellent Cape Madeira wine ... a small tortoise of the Gallipago breed:
A carboy is a special container for holding liquids that is cushioned within another container. The Galapagos giant tortoise derives its name from its habitat on the Galapagos Islands, west of Ecuador. The ensuing description of the tortoises serves as another example of Poe’s returning his situations and characters to mundane, calm levels once a sensational vignette has concluded. Additional sensational events follow hard upon this passage.

27
(p. 535)
Augustus’ wounded arm began to evince symptoms of mortification:
That is, gangrene, or necrosis, was setting in, a condition in which the local soft tissue around a wound dies and decays. Significantly, Augustus’ death from this condition occurs at midpoint in the novel. Reason and order, represented by his first name (see note 3), yield thereafter to ever-increasing fantasy.

28
(p. 540)
She proved to be the Jane Guy, of Liverpool, Captain Guy, bound on a sealing and trading voyage to the South Seas and Pacific:
This ship is also hermaphroditic (see note 24), in that it has a female and a male name.
Guy
may also imply making fun of someone or mocking a person; oncoming events strengthen such a context.

29
(p. 545)
Navigators have agreed in calling an assemblage of such encampments a
rookery: Although rookery may refer to a nesting area for birds, it may also mean a dilapidated tenement. As a verb,
rook
means “to cheat or defraud,” and so Poe again plants clues to deceit and deception, which course through the novel. Upon leaving the rookery, Pym symbolically begins to shed his adolescence.

30
(p. 548)
Chapter XV:
Most of the details in this chapter derive from Benjamin Morrell’s
A Narrative of Four Voyages
(1832), just one of the several travel-exploration publications that Poe pilfered for use in
Pym
(see note 11, above).

31
(p. 552)
Chapter XVI:
This chapter is largely derivative from Jeremiah N. Reynolds’s
Address on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas
(1836), which Poe favorably reviewed in the
Southern Literary Messenger
(January 1837). Henceforth, Antarctic exploration rather than mercantile enterprise becomes the mainstay in travel literature. These explorations were hot-topic current events, so Poe attempted to capitalize on such best-seller material.