ESSAY CEMETERY

Themes Metaliterature Appearance and reality Establishing respectability Establishing verity Excitement and risk regarding the sea Fear of the sea Anti- alcohol? Death wish It might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have just related would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. On the contrary, I never experienced a more ardent longing for the wild adventures incident to the life of a navigator than within a week after our miraculous deliverance. ·         Selective memory This short period 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. ·         Racism – the negro is particularly vicious ·         Close calls had made a narrow escape indeed; for ...

Preface (signed A.G Pym) Pym meets some people who urge him to write his tale. He is reluctant to publish it for fear he would not be believed because its contents are so marvelous. Also he is a poor writer. Mr. Poe, he says, took great interest in the tale and wrote it up and published it as fiction. Chapter I Pym comes from a respectable family in Nantucket. He goes out to sea on a small sailboat with his friend Augustus. Augustus takes the boat far out and Pym realizes that he is drunk. Pym can't sail well and a storm is approaching. He hears a terrible scream and passes out and wakes up on the deck of a whaling ship. He realizes that the two ships had collided and that they had been rescued, first Pym and Augustus after half an hour. They had both been near death. Chapter II 1.5 years after the Ariel disaster, he deceives his family who is opposed to his seafaring aspirations by telling them he is off to spend several weeks with Mr. Ross to whom he is relate...

The wife died, either by her life being somehow literally transferred to the painting and killing her, or by lack of joy and attention, and sadness. The painting became more real to the painter than the subject he was describing. This is neo-platonic in a sense because the text praises art; the artist "turned his eyes from the canvass rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife", as though he was drawing from the idea of his wife rather than the live person (Plato spoke of the world of ideas). This is a remark about art- its inherent evilness, its effect on the audience and the artist, and its immortality in contrast with the mortality of the subject. The text is metafictional, referencing art and books within it- the entire story is built upon a painting, visual art-within-literature, and a book about the art within the story- again art within art. The story creates a frame of reference and deeply adheres to it, so that there are no events really in the ...

The narrator and his valet break into an abandoned castle after the narrator is wounded. The narrator settles in bed to contemplate the many pictures on the wall and read about them in a book he has found. He suddenly notices the portrait of a young girl. Something about it makes him shut his eyes at the sight of it; tentatively he opens them again and is startled alert. He describes the style of the painting and its frame, but states that it was not these which startled him, but rather the lifelikeness of the painting. The narrator views the portrait at length and is "confused, subdued and appalled" by it. He turns to the book on the paintings he had been reading. The book describes the subject of the painting: a woman full of joy and love for all but art, which is the profession in which her husband, a painter, is entirely engrossed. The painter goes on to paint his reluctant wife, who humors his passion while pining for him. As the painter becomes more engrossed in his wor...