I'm doing a paper where I have to compare/contrast Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville and either they're character development or concepts of evil. The catch is the Poe work I have to refer to is the "Narrative of the Author Gordon Pyn of Nantucket." Anyone who can help is my hero.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2001

Answers

Mmelville curiously lists every source from the Bible to Jeremiah Reynolds(a friend of Poe AND source for a lot of the Pym novel)but not Poe! In "Moby Dick" the theme of whiteness being evil and death mirrors the appearance of the shrouded figure of white at the end of Pym. Side note: Poe had many enemies in the New England circles of Melville and Hawthorne though none of these three had bad feelings toward each other. Symbolism, shock of horror, the overwhelming. sometimes demonic threat of nature(the forest primeval for H. Scarlet Letter, Goodman Brown,, the sea for P. and M.). Add that to human weakness and sin which this nature often provokes to the character's self-destruction. This is a LARGE subject and good reference works plus a lot of reading of all three is a must.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2001