please help as soon as possible! i have to write a research paper in 2 days comparing and contrasting the theme, subject, or issue in The Assignation and Ms. Found in a Bottle by Poe. thank you! xoxo- sarah

-- Anonymous, December 19, 2001

Answers

First they are unlike in that one is about Poe's theme and personal experience of lost love and the other about a moody traveller on a dooomed ghost ship. Alike structurally in having a remote narration(bottle message, interviewer-witness in the Assignation) and a final horrific tragedy. The poet attains his love in double death, fulfilling his strange artistic mission as well. The melancholic romantic gets the dark gothic fate he has been seeking in spades. Both seem drowned in horror and a kind of dark, triumphant fulfillment that is hard to understand. The readert is allowed by the narration devices to stand back in awe. The production of that single final emotion is the great work of both tales, among other Poe stories.

Compare the philosophical statements of the tow doomed heroes, their actions to save themselves or go along the ride of fate and their maintaining of full conscious thought as they die, writing or speaking until the end.

The Assignation is darker and more complex than the supernatural tale of the Bottle(one of Poe's few really supernatural stories though we only have the bottled manuscript to trust). His onetime lover, the bride of another, is despairing totally and tries to drown her child. The poet saves the child as a token against that despair. The way out she is now ready for is a double suicide tryst.

Not much time. If you have questions please write.

-- Anonymous, December 20, 2001