The Romantic Narrative of Edgar Allen Poe on Race

Written in a time of political turmoil and racial unrest, Poe explores many of the psychological opinions and feelings concerning race through a romantic narrative. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym envelopes Romance in entirety. Pym plays the heroic boy thrown into a historical setting where he encounters many trials and tribulations, in some cases to a supernatural extreme, that alludes to the larger topic of Race, in this case a simple discrepancy of white or black. Edgar Allen Poe uses Arthur Gordon Pym as a device, a provider for deeper meanings, noticing the similarity of Pym's name to Poe. Poe places a curious teen boy seeking wayward adventure in broader denotative contexts as to relate issues concurrent to the time of Poe writing the novel around the Civil War, to symbolic allegory presented in the novel, a key characteristic to Romantic stories. Poe provides the primary narrative which encompasses Arthur Gordon Pym's narrative. Pym illustrates his memories of events on the verge of reality, alluding to exaggerated and mystical events and accounts. Poe thus utilizes this to slip in deeper meanings through symbolic allegory. My impression of the mental character expressed by the author and therefore his reasoning defending the entire novel is similar to what I would label the mind-set of most anglo-saxons towards the "darker" race throughout the 19th century. 

Throughout the novel, characters, objects, and events declare a spot on the racial color spectrum. Characters such as the black cook who parades through the ship hurling hammers into men's foreheads, or the final christ-like figure with skin of "perfect whiteness of snow," the psychological implications are obvious. Most all the aspects from the story either fall into the savage, mysterious, and wicked black category or the magnificent, safe, and pure white category. Further yet, Poe includes elements that break the white/black barrier to instigate a slightly skewed perception on the topic. For example, Tiger, man's best friend and Pym's loyal dog comforts Pym through his fearful stowage and even aids in an attack of the mutineers. Yet in Pym's first account of starvation, the dog who ironically is black turns viciously upon Pym's throat. Similarly, Dirk Peters, a "hybrid" of Indian descent, can be neither classified white nor black therefore falling in the middle of Pym's favor. Who had once attacked and threatened Augustus and Pym, Dirk Peters becomes of of Pym's closest surviving friends. Peters had rescued Pym on two occasions and was present through most of Pym's incidents he speaks of. 

Using unusual metaphorical imagery, Poe presents religion with his major theme of race. The black islands and their barbaric black inhabitants illustrated with black teeth even, sync with preconception of hell. Pym's travel through the center of the Earth adverts an epic passage through the self on the question of black and white which ultimately results in the assurance of a brilliant after-life white. This momentous transcendental figure of white carries so much influential weight on religion, humanity, politics, and human mindsets to this very day. Poe seems to mock Pym in the closing scene ending him in death and leaving the reader unsettled and searching. Poe provides this answer, gloriously revealed leaving the reader to ponder on the matter presented from the tale of Pym's adventures. 

As Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was received with many questions and criticisms, most of which were not good. Race plays the leading role in the novel and romance simply provides a means for Poe to pursue and present it. Despite opposing opinions, Poe's novel arouses and provokes concerns and discussion, which stimulates inward thinking concerning the world around us and those among us, which makes the story of success in itself.