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.And yet, by bringing Pym the note from Augustus (a note whose writingPym cannot see, and whose message he can only partially read), Tiger helpssave Pym s life as well.Given these reversals and double reversals, to say thatnothing is as it seems in these chapters would be an understatement.16Drunk, famished, dropping in and out of consciousness, lost in a labyrinth ofcrates, and constantly in the dark, Pym s senses tell him nothing at leastnothing he can trust.17By the middle of his narrative, several harrowing crises andpseudocrises later, Pym reflects on his changing perspective:Notwithstanding the perilous situation in which we were stillplaced, ignorant of our position, although certainly at a great100Scott Peeplesdistance from land, without more food than would last us for afortnight even with great rare, almost entirely without water, andfloating about at the mercy of every wind and wave, on the merestwreck in the world, still the infinitely more terrible distresses anddangers from which we had so lately and so providentially beendelivered caused us to regard what we now endured as but littlemore than an ordinary evil so strictly comparative is eithergood or ill.(IV, 139)Pym s sanguine outlook smacks of self-delusion, as J.Gerald Kennedyargues:  Pym s interpretation of past events as divinely ordained.rationalizes unspeakable happenings.His reckoning betrays anunderstandable need to construe the horrors that he undergoes as orderedand meaningful rather than random and senseless. 18 Readers, however, areless likely than Pym to see the hand of providence at work on his behalf.true,he keeps escaping, but only to endure the next atrocity.And, as Kennedynotes, by this point Pym has witnessed and participated in more than hisshare of horrors, among them cannibalizing Parker and encountering theDutch brig littered with putrescent Corpses.19Whereas in the hold of the Grampus Pym was relieved upon having hisdelusions clarified, in both these cases the reality is more horrifying than themisperception.In the case of Parker, the cannibalism proves to have beenunnecessary: five days later, Pym remembers where he left an axe °that willenable the three survivors to break into the forecastle and obtain food.Themeeting with the Dutch brig, which Pym describes in much more gruesomedetail, suggests either the absence of providence or a God who mocks hisvictims.As the brig and the Grampus near each other, Pym believes his partyis saved.He sees a sailor seemingly  encouraging us to have patience;nodding to us in a cheerful although rather odd way, and smiling constantlyso as to display a set of the most brilliantly white teeth (IV, 123).After pour[ing] out our whole souls in shouts and thanksgiving to God for thecomplete, unexpected, and glorious deliverance that was so palpably at hand(IV, 124), the castaways discover the true state of things: the sailor s motions,which they had seen as a sign of hope, are caused by a huge seagull on thedead man s back, eating away at his flesh.Perhaps in the wake of this episode,Pym comes to see God s providence in the fact that he and Peters, and at thetime Parker and Augustus, are still alive, at least, but the image of the deathship could just as easily be seen as God s ironic answer to their prayers.20If Pym is about the human need to  discover meaning in a worldwhere meaning is either hidden or nonexistent, Poe s abrupt; problematicThe Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym 101ending epitomizes that theme (or perhaps we should say  anti-theme ).AsPaul Rosenzweig points out, Pym s final words in the last published chapterconstitute only one of three endings, since the book actually ends with theeditor s note, which in turn alludes to another lost ending.21 Even the endingof the editor s note has a deceptive ring to it:  I have graven it within the hills,and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock only sounds biblical, andalthough it suggests some curse upon the Tsalalians, its meaning is unclear(IV, 208).22 The first ending (chapter 25) also intimates more than it actuallydelivers, as Pym discovers some incredible phenomenon or vision that he andPeters are pulled toward at a  hideous, velocity through milky waters:  Andnow we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itselfopen to receive us.But there arose is our pathway a shrouded human figure,very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men.And the hueof the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow (IV, 206).Read purely on the level of hoax, these sentences do nothing but taunt thereader with the hint of a profound revelation but no substance, and notenough evidence to draw a reasonable inference.Like the  never-to-be-imparted secret of  Ms.Found in a Bottle; the  truth about the SouthPole is it, as Poe suggests in both  Ms. and Pym; a vortex, a passagewayinto a hollow earth? is never revealed.23 Read as the (anti-) conclusion of anovel about deception, the passage presents one final instance of theprotagonist (and, through him; the reader) being mocked either: by hisunreliable senses or by the natural world: Pym finds at the end of his journeya figure of pure whiteness, a blank, human in form but shrouded.Criticsinfluenced by deconstruction have, in various ways, found the blank, humanfigure emblematic of the absence of stable meaning, whether textual orspiritual or both.John T [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]