The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel, published in 1838.

The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called Grampus. Various adventures and mis-adventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny and cannibalism. The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify in later chapters, involving religious symbolism and the Hollow Earth.

Plot introduction

Poe wrote the novel with a deliberate and experimental structure whereby the mood of each chapter was matched by the corresponding chapter at the other end of the book. This results in the narrative starting optimistic, descending into depression and then returning to optimism.

Major themes

An interesting note about this book is the part concerning cannibalism. In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, there is a shipwreck in which four survivors are left clinging to the hull. Rather than die of starvation, they draw lots to see which one would get eaten. The loser is a man named Richard Parker. In 1884, 46 years after the book's publication, a yacht named the Mignonette was making a trip from England to Australia. On its way, the boat sank and the four survivors became stranded in a dinghy. After sixteen days, Captain Dudley and his two mates killed and ate the cabin boy - coincidentally a young man named Richard Parker. On return to England, the three men were charged with murder. The lawbooks were officially changed so that murder was only acceptable under self-defense and the men were found guilty.[1]

The Limerick shipowner Francis Spaight named at least two ships after himself. The London Times, of June 22, 1836 reported the wreck of the first of these ships, which had taken place on December 3, 1835. A boy named Patrick O'Brien, the ship's cook John Gorman and another boy named George Burns were in turn killed and eaten by their fellow survivors before they were rescued by a passing American ship, the Agenoria. This incident was retold by Jack London as a short story, entitled The "Francis Spaight" (A True Tale Retold), written in 1908. Many years earlier, it may well have inspired Poe's novel, published a couple of years after the wreck.

Spaight soon sold the second boat named after himself, built in 1836. It was under different ownership when it was wrecked in Table Bay near Capetown on January 7, 1846. Fifteen of the crew and eight rescuers lost their lives. There could not have been any cannibalism associated with this shipwreck, for the ship ran aground rather than drifting in the open seas. By coincidence, there was an apprentice called Richard Parker among the victims of the 1846 Francis Spaight sinking.

First edition title page

Allusions/references from other works

In 1897 French author Jules Verne published The Sphinx of the Ice Fields. A sequel to The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the two-volume novel explores the adventures of the Halbrane as its crew search for answers to what became of Pym. Translations of this text are sometimes titled An Antarctic Mystery or The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Poe's novel was also an influence on H. P. Lovecraft, whose 1936 story At the Mountains of Madness follows similar thematic direction and borrows the cry tekeli-li from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Yann Martel named a character in his Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi after Poe's fictional Richard Parker, and other real life Richard Parkers who were all coincidentally involved with cannibalism, ship wrecks and having the same name (see above). As Yann Martel said "So many Richard Parkers had to mean something." So many Richard Parkers have apparently confused Martel, who in interviews has inadvertently transferred the cannibalism from the 1836 Francis Spaight shipwreck (where there was no Richard Parker aboard) to the 1846 Francis Spaight shipwreck (where there was a Richard Parker lost). [2]

External links

• The Strange Disappearance of Arthur G. Pym

• Jack London's re-telling of the story of the wreck of the first Francis Spaight

• Two ballads concerning the wreck of the first Francis Spaight

• Joseph Shepherd, owner of the second Francis Spaight and the story of its sinking

• List of victims of the wreck of the second Francis Spaight

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