Scale and the sea--ecocritical entries into Poe?

I am going to try to fit together my various notes and strands of thought on chapter one, with regard to our class discussion today, in order to locate ecocritical entry ways into Pym....

Chapter one begins, like Beowulf and other Epics, with a sort of short genealogy for Pym, which begins with his father, courses through the main agents of his education, and ends, strangely, with Augustus—who might be seen as his wild and imaginative counterpart. After all, the two “occupy the same bed.” So long as Pym and Augustus remain inside “lying like a dog” they have only their adventure stories, and can only retreat into their imaginations. It is implied that only a dog would be so senseless and unconscious to forgo the opportunity for real exploration. The opportunity presents itself, first, through Augustus’s intoxication (which we may read literally as drunkenness, additionally as passion or “ecstasy”), but Augustus would still be passed out with intoxication if not for the “glorious breeze from the southwest”…the “coolness of the night air” which “starts him up.” Thus, it is hard to say how much of Augustus behavior is a result of alcohol consumption and how much is the intoxicating effect of the sea, the wind, and night.


The wind/breeze/air is mentioned over and over again as a catalyst for various reactions—often causing Pym and Augustus to act on the impulses the wind stirs up. Thus, the wind is not only outside, but inside the mind, and it often sets the characters in motion. Thus, begins the dualism of coming to consciousness in chapter one. Pym recognizes, the “usual effect” of air: “The coolness of night air, however, had its usual effect—the mental energy began to yield before its influence—and the confused perception which he no doubt then had of his perilous situation had assisted in hastening the catastrophe. He was now thoroughly insensible…” (592). Here the night air affects the blurring of distinction between the mental energy or rational nature, and the body/physical senses—perhaps even animal nature which are often in conflict, and Poe shows this to be even more apparent in “perilous situations, where ones environment makes this internal conflict all the more urgent.

This dynamic can be seen through the parallelism of Pym and Augustus throughout—Pym being the more rational one, who is also more conscious of how his rationale yields to the influence of the senses—impulses which Augustus stirs up in him. You could almost read Pym as the mind, Augustus as the body of the dualistic relationship Poe wants to frustrate—and ultimately how problematic it is to separate the two. Augustus is often described as insensible, in a “highly concentrated state of intoxication.” It is even suggested that his unbalanced and impassioned state is a madness. Whatever it is, it is deceptive, as Pym says, how Augustus appears to have “perfect possession of his senses.” After being enticed to follow Augustus onto the boat, throwing reason to the wind, it is only in Augustus’s absence (having passed out) that Pym can regain “some degree of presence of mind.” Only, it is hard to know if it’s Augustus's absence, Pym’s solitude, or an utter lack of sensation (“I was so utterly benumbed, too, in every limb…” (593)) that enables the “presence of mind.”

On the one hand, the senses (empirical knowledge, i.e. “coolness of night air”) prevent or override the mind/rational thought and this has the effect of delusion or deception—this is what leads the two onto the boat in the first place. On the other hand, being “numb to the senses” as Pym is on the boat, unable to feel his limbs, causes him to “accidentally” lose control of the mast—though nature intercedes, turning his accident into the very thing that saves him from “destruction.” This numbness of limbs is, like the accident itself, a direct result of nature on the senses, and Pym is conscious of (rationally attuned to) the effects of nature on his senses. Conversely, senseless Augustus, in the bottom of the boat, demonstrates another type of “imminent danger” because he is not only senseless, but also lacks Pym’s presence of mind to know that he is senseless.

While I cant say with any certainty that Poe is invested in Descarte’s dualism, it seems that nature (wind, storm, sea) is used to blur the distinction between mind and body and the correspondence of each to the rational/material/exterior or emotional/psychological/interior, and that nature makes man's reliance on his own resources more urgent. Furthermore, nature often isolates man, so that he has only his own resources—rational and sensory— to make sense of things. In fact, even in the society of other people—particularly at sea—it’s every man for himself. The wind and water are so loud at sea that there is very little talk. Pym often notes the lack of speech, as well as the things said that he only partially hears. For instance, Captain Block’s “drown and be d—d” is heard only partially (whether b/c of sea or denial) and this may be paralleled to Augustus’s earlier “going home—d—d—don’t you see?” (592). The sea and the inability to see and hear limit one’s ability to speak. This happens to Pym a great deal and he is conscious of the lack of speaking and communication that takes place on the water.

Furthermore, the sea makes sounds for which there is no context for interpretation. Originally, this is what causes Pym to “tumble” into the sea—the sound Pym hears that evokes fear in him. Fear is nearly a reversal of the wind that wakes Augustus and draws them to the sea. Though fear is likewise evoked by something “outside” Pym, he reacts to it by drawing inward; he admittedly reacts by retreating from “the source” which proves an ineffective way to negotiate the unknown. Pym deludes himself: “I felt the blood congealing in my veins—my heart ceased utterly to beat, and without having once raised my eyes to learn the source of my alarm, I tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body…” This brings to mind Hawthorne’s psychosomatic scarlet “A” insofar as the mind affects physical manifestations of itself. Pym “tumbles” because he lets his mind become detached from his senses, and is, thus, unable to temper fear with the exterior world. What begins as a feeling or a premonition in the mind, becomes a physical reaction (heart ceased), and because Pym failed to look up—to see the source of his alarm in the exterior world—to physically get his balance—he fails to stand against nature, and falls “headlong” upon a body, “insensible.” It seems that man can only coexist with nature when his mind and body are in balance, and because this is rarely if ever the case, nature has a way of tumbling man overboard, along with his scale.

Pym seems to support the idea that humans need “tools” to help them “navigate” the natural world. Clearly, Poe is invested in science. Early on, at sea, Pym mourns his lack of tools to face the storm with: “A storm was evidently gathering behind us; we had neither compass nor provisions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land before daybreak.” Nature is beyond human capacity for knowledge; humans need tools to navigate it. Pym knows, rationally, that to go at nature alone and challenge it unaided with only one’s physical strength and “sensibility”, without science or technology, will lead one to the point where senses are impotent (land is out of sight).

Later, Pym finds out it is other men (hunting men), not the sound he hears, or the storm, or his own inability to right the ship, which tumbles Pym. These same men ultimately restore him. Pym reflects on the facts afterward, seeming to say: If only I could have known they were “almost at right angles to our own course” (science) or if only the hunting men were more perceptive, this would not have happened. Still, it seems it would it have. Pym and his little boat are next to nothing in comparison with the Whaling boat, “The huge ship…rode immediately over us with as much ease as our own little vessel would have passed over a feather…. Yet, neither of the boats compare to “the roar of wind and water” (593). The wind and water shut out communication, and overwhelm human perception and rationale again and again. But what seems of ecocritical import is how the sea affects society--the extent to which the ship contains the world, and the way the sea distorts the human sense of scale (we discussed how the sea subverts democracy in class).

How is Poe using the first chapter as a “lesson” for both Pym and the reader? Clearly, the irony of “lesson” adds to the sense that he is making fun of people, as someone said in class. Pym learns a lesson insofar as he sees that the Ariel was like a feather and he experiences, first hand, proof of nature's ability to wipe him out. Yet, what makes it more interesting to pursue the following chapters is what makes Pym forget his lesson, or else, what makes him willingly and knowingly go back. Pym admits to his own forgetting and romanticizing of the past: “This short period (after the event) proved amply long enough to erase from my memory the shadows and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting points of colour, all the picturesqueness of the late perilous accident” (596). I can’t help but see parallels to Plato’s cave allegory here.

Poe speaks to the tendency of mind, afterward, to forget things and embellish others, to heighten the story. Our artistic inclinations seem to be another kind of “shadow” which erases the “lesson” and draws one back to same mistakes. What does this mean for his narrative—narrative mode in general? After all, the wind that draws Pym to sea also draws him away from the boring complacency of the house where the dogs are content to lay around. How is the reader as “navigator” of text” paralleled to seaman? How are we readers as short-sighted as Pym, so quickly forgetting what we’ve just learned, and so affected by the narrative devices and the arbitrary distinctions between fiction and nonfiction? I wonder if Buell's world making text is applicable here....and now I'm just rambling.