Browsing by Subject "Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"

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    How do I know you?: Identity Problems and Failure of Racial Binary in Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
    (2011) Shu, Ling; Stadler, Gustavus
    This thesis explores Poe's representations and understandings of race in Pym. After grounding the reader in racial understanding of Poe's time (1830's), the thesis explores binary theory in the context of race, where the key racial matrix is white versus non-white. Based on the understanding that binary pairs are negatively defined and thus structurally unstable and fluid, we can see evidence of racial trait blurring and identity bleeding in Pym. Racial identity determination is based upon both a physical (body) criterion and a performative criterion. We can see tension and contractions where the text struggles to uphold a racial binary but, to an extent, fails. These tensions and contradictions grow increasingly frequent as the narrative progresses. Identity is fluid and cannibalistic in nature. In a limited way, this thesis also addresses colonialism.
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    Prophecies of the Breach: The Whiteness and Blackness of Sea Monsters
    (2014) Kahn, Nicholas A. B.; Reckson, Lindsay Vail, 1982-
    This essay addresses racial monstrosity in the sea-monsters of two important novels from the antebellum United States: the "shrouded human figure" in Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1839) and the White Whale in Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Whereas scholarship on the racial monstrosity of these monsters has historically read them allegorically as products of the specific conditions of pre-Civil War America, I argue for transcending the allegorical reading. I read the monstrosity of Moby Dick and the "shrouded human figure" rather as rooted in fears and desires that were not abolished with slavery, and are not confined to a historical moment. They blur metaphysical boundaries that are fundamentally human, lying between known and unknown, self and other, white and black. I argue that, given an allegorical reading, Poe's sea-monster embodies a fear of racial revolution that is racist; but becomes a more-destructive metaphysical fear of blackness overtaking whiteness when one moves beyond the allegorical/historical reading. Similarly, for Ahab Moby Dick embodies the fear of blackness usurping whiteness, but Melville offers something that Poe does not: a way of viewing the monster that reconciles whiteness with blackness. Melville's antidote to the monster is linked to the abolitionist mentality that blends black and white America into a new and coherent whole. But, more importantly, his vision of peaceful incorporation (rather than violent division) turns the boundary between white and black from a source of fear into a catalyst for transcendent human communion.