Things That Go Bump in the Night
Poe is an eloquent writer who, in the art of making Pym come to life, finds a way to make the most memorable scenes clear and concise in the novel. Poe, often considered the master of the dark, has made a hellish nightmare scene so vivid that it leaves the reader afraid to scan the next line. The dream sequence is logically ordered from what could be the best possible scenario to what could be the worst possible scenario. As the dream sequence begins we are faced with the first peril of Pym. To me this danger is on the lowest degree of any that Poe writes in the novel. In his recollection of the first part of the dream Pym says, "I was smothered to death between two huge pillows, by demons of the most ghastly and ferocious aspect."(28) The pillows in the dream, more than likely, represent Pym's own fear of sleeping too long in his box. As the ocean voyage started, Pym had no other desires than to sleep. He slept for such long amounts of time that it is possible that his mind was attempting to tell him that he had slept long enough, and if he did not awaken, he would surely perish in his fatigue. Poe moves from this rather easy death to one of a more religious stand off.
One explanation for the worst of the dreams that Pym faced was that his dog, Tiger, was near him during the dream and Pym's mind placed the dog as a lion. Just as Pym thought his dream could get no worse, Poe managed to add a detail that changed the setting and the scenario in such a way that Pym was even more frightened than he had been before. Pym declares that, "Immense serpents held me in their embrace, and looked earnestly in my face with their fearfully shining eyes. Poe was a master of making the dark come to life and ordering text in a way that made it impossible for anyone to gather any more from it than he intended to give them. Also, I believe that when we dream we have a subconscious method of knowing what is happening in our immediate environment. Pym wanted to leave his home and this boat was his desert. As the lion gets closer Pym says that "Making a last strong effort, I at length breathed a faint ejaculation to God, and resigned myself to die. Other influences upon the dreams could be the biography of Poe himself. Pym was certain that the beast was going to devour him and make a light snack of him. "(28-29) The first possible answer to this text is another religious allegory to the story of Moses. Their roots were concealed in wide-spreading morasses, whose dreary water lay intensely black, still, and altogether terrible. In any scenario, the dreams were so well depicted that, whether light or heavy, they were going to make the reader paranoid and afraid for the sake of the character. They were fleeing something and set out to get as far away as possible. Poe used a marvelous tactic by giving Pym a friend at the end of the dream.
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,
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Acceptance Essays
