The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Edgar Allan Poe's longest 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.
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.
External link
- The Strange Disappearance of Arthur G. Pym (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA98/silverman/poe/frame.html)