Reflected in the ebony sides of the vortex, producing a “gleaming and ghastly radiance.” In all, the effect is that of a 188).Īdded to the activity of the Maelstrom itself are the moonbeams, shooting forth in “a flood of golden glory” and, when Top of the funnel, he feels an unforgettable “sensation of awe, horror, and admiration” at the scene he witnesses (p. As he looks about him, the boat having been sucked into the “so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power” (p. Immediately after heĪbandons hope and therefore rational expectations, the sailor reflects on “how magnificent a thing” it would be to die in The sailor can do something he has never really done before: he can look at the abyss with detachment.Īnd then, almost inevitably, there follows an awareness and appreciation of the awesome beauty of the Maelstrom.
With nothing to gain, no reason to exert, no plan to formulate, no expectations to make, Stage of transcendence, of selflessness (5). When confronted with the total otherness of the Maelstrom, man’s reason is indeed puny and impotent. Hope, the sailor recognizes the utter futility of any rational plan of escape. But the state of hopelessness has other effects as well. Which would have driven him, like his brother, insane. 187), and so he relieves himself of a great deal of terror - terror Initially makes up his mind “to hope no more” (p. Once caught in the Maelstrom, escape for the sailor comes in several stages, the first of which is a type of beneficial despair. “The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways nor are the models that we frame any wayĬommensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of The sailor of “A Descent” is similar to both these characters, and so, before hisĭescent, he seems unaware that - as the story’s epigraphical quotation from Joseph Glanville states Nor can he measure time, as Pym cannot in So the prisoner’s estimates of both the size and the shape of the dungeon are erroneous. The Pendulum,” whose first reaction to the chaotic, dreamlike dungeon-world is to measure it. He is therefore akin to the narrator of “The Pit and To act in a certain way, according to his technologically measured design. Instrument and the arbitrary measurements (minutes and hours) it produces, the sailor seems to expect something of chaos: he expects it The Maelstrom, the mariner reveals an attitude toward Nature that is essentially practical and rationalistic. For in depending so on his watch, even though it has been accurate in timing The sailor gets caught in the Maelstrom because of a simple mistake: he lets his watch run down, and consequently he fails to leave The way in which it is told and by the fact that it is being told - that the first narrator has been affected by the This frame narrative foreshadows and broadens the thematic conclusions implicit in the framed tale. Secondly, the sailor’s tale is both supported and complemented by the first narrator’s introductory For the sailor manages to save himself through his poetic appreciation of Nature, not through his rationalĬomprehension of it. Sailor’s narrative illustrates Poe’s thesis that, as regards the chaotic mysteries of Nature, aesthetic intuition is far It will be seen, first and most significantly, that the Preliminary narrator by the sailor, the actual descender into the Maelstrom. The first, related by the unnamed narrator who tells us the sailor’s tale the second - the tale proper - told to this It is the purpose of this essay to give the tale greater attention than it has hitherto received by focusing on its two narratives: “A Descent” in anthology introductions, essays, and books are generally brief (3). And the references to and critical discussions of The only articles devoted exclusively to the tale are source studies (2). Nonetheless, although “Aĭescent” is frequently anthologized, the critical attention given the story is - in volume at least - relatively The reader feels the awful terror of these elements as they are described by the man who faced them. The blackness is there the kinetic walls are there the chaotic abyss is there and So well so much that is characteristically his (1). That Poe considered “A Descent into the Maelstrom” one of his best tales is understandable, since the story incorporates Beauty and Truth: Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom” Gerard M.
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