For all of its flaws, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an interesting exper

For all of its flaws, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is an interesting experiment. On one hand, the novel
explores a number of elements that would eventually define Poe’s career. So, in that sense, it’s an interesting occasion to see those ideas develop across the broader scope of a novel-length narrative.
On the other hand, Pym is, in many ways, a departure from the more typical elements of his fiction to that.
point.
Unlike much of his earlier fiction, Pym avoids the supernatural elements at work in stories like “Morella” or
“Metzengerstein” or even the intensely distorted reality of the maddened narrator in “Berenice.” The
narrative is presented as a realistic tale – even as one event after another stretches the boundaries of
plausibility to the breaking point.
Similarly, while certain episodes confuse or baffle Arthur momentarily, he – and therefore the reader – almost.
always end up with a fairly complete and objective understanding of what’s happened. Contrast this with the
unresolved ambiguity of many earlier short tales.
And, even when Poe deploys some of his familiar techniques: such as a recursive narrative structure, doubling.
or a gothic challenge to rationality, those techniques appear with a difference in a novel, since they tend to
appear over and over, shifting the meaning of those elements.
Goals for the midterm essay:
1. Address one or two other Poe texts from earlier this semester as a way to identify continuities or
differences with Pym as described above. The overall focus should be on Pym, but let the other texts shape
your presentation of the novel. These other texts should highlight something in Pym by way of contrast or
by elaborating on a shared element.
2. Analyze the impact of one or both of these general themes:
▪ The presentation of a world that resists rational understanding
▪ The consistent failure of structure and order
3. Connect one or both of these general themes to a question of more specific interest:
Epistemology: You could approach the novel as one that comments on the philosophical question
of how we know – or fail to know – the world around us in a broad sense. In the end, what lesson
does Poe’s novel hold for its reader on this subject?
Does it highlight the limits of particular kinds of knowledge, such as scientific or instinctual? Does it
raise doubts about the possibility of any stable understanding of the world? What kinds of things
show up as the greatest threats to knowledge? Which characters know with the least accuracy?
What, if anything, makes knowledge possible?
Social order: While still a fairly abstract idea, the question of social order translates some of these
philosophical questions into a more tangible realm. We see a number of different kinds of ways in
which society can be structured within the novel: the egalitarian friendship between Arthur and
Augustus, the top-down power of fathers over sons and captains over their crew, the democratic
equality of the men drawing straws, the tribal organization of the Tsalal islanders. (Not to mention
the society of the penguins and albatross…)
Does Poe depict any kinds of order as particularly successful? What problems does he point about
the various systems he depicts? Can the reader take any lessons about American democracy or
Southern slavery based on this novel? If Poe really was “bitterly hostile to democracy,” as literary
critic F.O. Matthiessen famously claimed, do you find evidence of that here? Is he less hostile to
some other kind of order?
Race and Slavery: As a more historically and politically specific approach, you could consider the
way Pym’s depiction of shaky rationality and order might translate into a commentary on race and
slavery.
There are characters and incidents that explicitly invoke racial identity, so those would be a good
place to start – but you would want to connect those scenes to the novel’s overall concern with the
instability of knowledge and social order. How do those forces shape what the novel ends up saying
about race and slavery?
Does the book primarily authorize or reinforce the racial hierarchy of white supremacist thought and
slavery? Or does it challenge the logic of slavery, a system that relies on reliably identifying racial
difference and the strict maintenance of order? (There is of course no reason why a novel couldn’t
do both of the above…)
You could take on this issue in a historical sense, looking at this as a novel originally meant to be
published in Virginia: the same southern state in which Nat Turner had carried out his 1831 slave
revolt and which had seen a backlash against the prospects of freedom for African Americans. Or,
you might consider ways in which the novel’s treatment of these issues holds some relevance for our contemporary consideration of race.
Evaluation: The single largest component of your grade on this assignment will be your ability to work with
specific quotes from the Poe texts you are writing about: Pym and one or two earlier readings from the course.
• General claims not supported by relevant quotes from the text will not make for a successful essay.
• Likewise, quotes need to be directly relevant to your claims and you will need to make sure that you
link details in the quote to the claims that you want to make.
I will review these expectations in upcoming classes.
Otherwise, the essay will be graded based on the overall clarity of your argument and the strength of
connection you make between Pym and other readings.