NARRATOR

The narrator has major issues. This unnamed character is an abusive bully and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and himself. He's writing to us from his prison cell, on the eve of his scheduled death by hanging. In addition to the details of his heinous crimes, he reveals his psychological transformation from nice-guy to villain. He tells us that around the time he murdered his wife, all "good" had been driven from his personality (22).

And he doesn't seem to be confessing out of a sense of guilt. Over the course of the story, the narrator provides several reasons for his various behaviors. But mostly he seems to be blaming the cat (or cats) for all his problems. According the narrator, it's the cat's fault that the domestic scene of the story ultimately turned so foul. This seems to be his real point in telling us the story. Is this a case of the insanity defense? Like the narrator in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," this narrator also begins his story with the declaration that he isn't "mad," and that his story is no "dream" (1). He says he knows we probably won't believe it. He also says that what happened is "a series of mere household events," you know, just the day-to-day business of family life (1). The final line of the first paragraph is important. The narrator says that he lacks "logic" and that he's too "excitable" to tell the story plainly, to show that the murder of his wife is completely understandable. He hopes a logical reader, who isn't too "excitable" will be able to demystify the story and understand what it means.

So what is going on here? The man seems to contradict himself at every turn. He says he isn't crazy, but then he says he isn't capable of understanding his own reality. Is he trying to sound crazy? Well, that's exactly what some critics believe.

There is an excellent essay on this subject titled "Irresistible Impulses: Edgar Allan Poe and the Insanity Defense," by critic John Cleman. In it, Cleman argues that the narrator might be trying to prove he's insane to avoid his death sentence. You might have heard of the "insanity defense." (You can read all about it here.) Basically, this is a principle of law which states that if a person is insane, he or she can't be held fully accountable for the crime which he or she has committed. The tricky part is proving insanity.

In British law (on which the American law is based) in 1581 being insane meant not being able to tell the difference between right and wrong, in the same way that "an infant, a brute, or a wild beast" would be unable to know the difference (source).

Now it's time for a History Snack: In 1843 (the year this story was published) this legal principle made it into the books when the Scottish woodcutter Daniel M'Naughten accidentally shot and killed the secretary of the Prime Minister of England. The shooting and the killing wasn't accidental, but the victim was. M'Naughten meant to hit the Prime Minister himself, because he thought the man was the mastermind of a hideous plot against him. Since M'Naughten was found insane, he didn't get the death penalty. Instead, he spent the rest of his life in mental institutions. The media was all over the story, and Poe, who read everything, probably would have known all about it.

(Click here for a more recent, and much more famous case of the insanity defense, the 1982 trial of John Hinckley, Jr. In an effort to impress Jodie Foster, Hinckley tried to assassinate then president Ronald Reagan.)

That brings us back to "The Black Cat." Basically, if the narrator can prove that he doesn't know the difference between right from wrong, then he can avoid the gallows. He can't just say he doesn't know right from , he has to show it. Which is where the cat comes in. If he can compellingly argue that the cat did wrong, not him, the he has things in the bag.

Now, if the narrator is writing this from jail. He's already been to trial, been found guilty, and been sentenced to death. This means either that his lawyer didn't raise the insanity defense, or that the lawyer did raise it but the jury didn't buy it. So, the letter might be a kind of final appeal. If he can bring his sanity into question, he might be able to at least get another trial.

Since we don't have enough information to know whether the narrator does know the difference between right or wrong, we can't say for sure whether or not he's insane (in terms of the insanity defense). That ambiguity is part of what makes this story exciting. The Narrator's Transformation: Youth and Bachelorhood Though it might be hard to believe at first, the narrator says that ever since he was a baby, he was sensitive, kind, and mellow. He was so nice that the other kids made fun of him. He absolutely loved animals, and his parents got him lots of them. "[F]eeding and caressing" his pets were his favorite activities once he reached "manhood" (2). His favorite pet was a dog, and he says that the two had a close relationship.

This sounds good on the surface, right? But, now that he's a killer, we have to put a different spin on it. We could look at the young narrator as a kid tormented by playground bullies (though perhaps for reasons other than his "tenderness of heart") (2). In his despair he turned to animals. They couldn't judge him or hurt him. They loved him for his company, and his food. He makes no mention of a social life, or love interest, other than his dog, who loved the man with "the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute." (2)

The portrait the narrator paints of himself as a young man is flat, or one-dimensional. According to him, he started off all good, and ended up all bad. Unless we want to believe he was born evil, it's important to at least entertain the possibility that he was once good. This glimpse of a kinder, gentler narrator allows us to feel bad for him, as uncomfortable as this might be. If this is an insanity defense, the possibility that he was once good, and therefore could be good again, might be rather persuasive. The Narrator's Transformation: Married Life Somehow, the narrator took time out from his relationship with his dog and other pets to find a woman and get married. Love of pets is the common ground between the man and his wife. He doesn't give us much more information about their relationship, until he starts to abuse her, and their lives become nightmares.

Though he blames the cat (or cats) for many things, the narrator doesn't complain at all about his wife. When she defies him in the end, he does kill her, which is like a complaint, the first one of the story. Whether this is also the first time she defied him, we know not.

So what happened? We don't really know. You could fill in the story's gaps in many different ways. Here's our spin: While happy as a bachelor, married life proves too much for our narrator. Driven to drinking and violence by the pressures of marriage and lack of deep, meaningful connection with his wife, the man gradually loses all his goodness. Even more so than today, marriage between a man and a woman was considered the ideal, proper situation for most people. Divorce was a hotly disputed issue in the law.

So, maybe the man was just unhappy in his marriage but couldn't admit it, or get out of it. It seems awfully suspicious that his first good night of sleep in who knows how long comes just after he kills his wife. Now, suppose the man wasn't happy in his marriage, and knew it. Suppose he felt he could only get out of it by killing his wife. If he is going for the insanity defense, it would not be smart to say bad things about his wife in the appeal. That would give him a motive for killing her, and destroy his defense. If he blames the cat, he has a chance. The Fiend Intemperance Before the death of Pluto, the narrator offers two important explanations for his behavior. The first is "the fiend Intemperance" (6). The second one is "the spirit of PERVERSENESS," which you can read about in the next section.

The narrator says that his "general temperament and character -- through the instrumentality of the fiend Intemperance [] experienced a radical alteration for the worse" (6).

What does that mean? Well, if a person is "temperate," he avoids drinking alcohol. "Intemperance" means the opposite. In Poe's day various groups were involved in the Temperance Movement. The movement lobbied for laws prohibiting and restricting the manufacture, use, and sale of alcohol. It also tried to educate people about the dangers of alcohol. "Temperance" stories offered fictional accounts of people driven to evil and despair from drinking. Poe seems to have used alcohol frequently, and probably had some conflicted feelings about it. As far as we know, he wasn't part of the Temperance Movement. Still, some critics and readers think "The Black Cat" is a temperance narrative.

But, because all mention of alcohol drops out of the story after the second black cat appears, we tend to doubt this. In a temperance story, alcohol takes center stage. It doesn't step out of the way for cats, no matter how fuzzy and cute they might be. This doesn't mean alcohol isn't portrayed negatively in this story. It is. But it's only one of many issues involved.

If you want to find out more about the Temperance Movement, click here. Also, check out "Quotes" on "Drugs and Alcohol" for some great lines dealing with the fiend. WIFE

The brief outline the narrator provides us of his wife suggests that she is kind, giving, loyal, and even heroic at the end. The narrator says she has "in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been [his] distinguishing characteristic." She is a highly sympathetic character, in her own right. The fact that the narrator abuses her, and her beloved pets, makes her even more sympathetic, and makes us think that the man is a complete bad guy. We can tell you that in the 1830s divorce was a hotly contested issue in the US. Both men and women had a difficult time getting out of an unhappy marriage. Usually, men had much more power than women, especially in terms of finances. There were limited educational and job possibilities for women. In this same paragraph, he suggests condescendingly that his wife is overly superstitious. A superstition is an irrational belief or fear. Belief in the supernatural is often considered superstitious. This is ironic, considering that he's the one trying to convince us that a black cat is to blame for all his problems. PLUTO Pluto is fine specimen of a cat. All black, large, fuzzy, and "and sagacious to an astonishing degree" (4). (Sagacious is a cool word to know. It means extremely wise, intelligent, and perceptive.) Over the years Pluto moves from a pampered pet to an abused beast. He is blinded and ultimately murdered by his owner. The narrator might have us believe that he is actually a witch in disguise (see the "Character Analysis" for the narrator's wife more), transforming from witch to Pluto, to the second black cat. To be fair, we gave the second cat his own "Character Analysis," so be sure to check that out. For now, we are focusing on the cat the narrator calls Pluto. Some critics argue that Pluto is a cat, and only a cat. Others think he's a symbol or allegory for other things. Others think he's both. Since we are all about open reading, we'll go with the third option. Poe had pets of his own, and is suspected to have been an animal lover. At a most basic level, the story seems designed to invite sympathy for animals, and raise awareness of animal abuse. Since you probably don't need a lecture on being nice to cats, we'll focus on a few allegorical and symbolic possibilities. THE SECOND CAT: The second black cat looks almost exactly like Pluto. He's big, black, and missing an eye. The only difference is the white spot. The spot starts off innocently enough, but then grows into an image of the gallows, if the narrator can be believed. With all these similarities, and with the narrator's insistence that the cat is more than just a cat, we might think the second black cat is some kind of supernatural version of Pluto. How, we might ask, could the second black cat be missing an eye, if he isn't Pluto undead? There is a possibility that Pluto never died. But, the narrator tells us that Pluto was not only hanged, but left hanging all day and night, and then somehow embedded in the plaster wall thereafter. It's pretty doubtful Pluto survived. So what about the missing eye? Well, if you think about it, in Poe's time there were probably plenty of stray cats with missing eyes. The second cat could have been abused by a previous owner. Or he could have lost it in a fight with another cat, or some other kind of accident. THEMES The Black Cat Theme of The Home Edgar Allan Poe's horror classic "The Black Cat" offers a sinister portrait of the home. Things seem alright in the beginning. A young couple, animal lovers both, get married and fill their home with "birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat" (3). But something, or several somethings, go terribly wrong. The home becomes a scene of domestic abuse and murder. The nameless narrator details the long, slow, brutal destruction of his home life, at his own hands. His story is a gruesome confession, written from his new home, a prison cell. By tapping into our deepest fears and anxieties about home and family "The Black Cat" never fails to chill us to the very marrow of our bones.

The Black Cat Theme of Violence In "The Black Cat" the unnamed narrator offers us a parade of violent acts. Eye gouging, hanging, axing these are the gruesome highlights. Until the end of the story, when somebody is killed, the detailed accounts of violence are focused on Pluto, the black cat who moves from pampered pet to persecuted beast. The violence the unnamed narrator practices against his wife and the other pets is rather vague. Yet, we get a pretty clear picture of what is happening. And by the end of the story the narrator has completely destroyed his family, and perhaps, completely destroyed himself in the process. In this horror classic, violence is an insidious beast that creeps, spreads, and grows uncontrollably, destroying all the bodies and minds it touches. The Black Cat Theme of Drugs and Alcohol In some stories (think stories by Ernest Hemingway) drinking has both positive and negative effects on the drinkers. Not so in "The Black Cat." The unnamed narrator of this grim tale claims he began abusing his wife and pets when his drinking got out of control, wrecking his personality. Some readers think this is a "temperance" narrative, a popular genre in Poe's day. "Temperance" in this context means "sobriety." The Temperance Movement focused on educating the public on the perceived dangers of drinking, and pushing legislature prohibiting the manufacture, use, and sale of alcohol. In a temperance narrative alcohol is the major issue, and is to blame for all the bad things that happen in the story. Here, alcohol fades out of the story just when things get bad, suggesting that alcohol is only one of many factors in the narrator's moral breakdown. The Black Cat Theme of Freedom and Confinement "The Black Cat," a claustrophobic tale of marital life gone wrong, offers a distinct movement from freedom to confinement. We meet the narrator already in his prison cell, writing, to free himself from his bonds the literal bonds of the cell, and the bondage confining his mind and heart. How he became so trapped is the subject of his writing and the reason why he has taken the pen to the page. We learn how he traps his wife and pets in a cycle of violence and abuse. As things go from bad to worse, the physical spaces the characters inhabit shrink. While the man's story begins in a house of wealth and comfort (or so he implies) it ends in brick tomb in the cellar of a rundown building. The Black Cat Theme of Justice and Judgment Since the unnamed narrator of "The Black Cat" is writing from his prison cell, we can be sure that justice and judgment are on his mind. In the 1830s, when Poe was writing, the wheels of legal justice couldn't begin to turn until our narrator went too far and killed his wife. At the time, it wasn't illegal to abuse one's wife or animals. The story questions ideas of judgment and justice, and reflects the fraught and turbulent state of the US justice system in a time when rights for women, African Americans, animals, children, the mentally ill, and convicted murderers were hotly contested issues. Since domestic abuse happens every day, in spite of the law, "The Black Cat" still finds a receptive audience, over 160 years after it first appeared on the literary scene. The Black Cat Theme of Transformation Disturbing physical and psychological transformations often for the worst are characteristic of most horror and Gothic tales. In "The Black Cat" some form of transformation occurs in nearly every paragraph. For the narrator, these changes are psychological. After he gets married, his personality spirals deeper and deeper toward the dark side, cruelly abusing his pets and his wife. His initially happy home life is turned upside down, and everyone involved is adversely affected and changed for the worse. Like many horror stories, "The Black Cat" also offers the possibility of supernatural change, though this might just be a figment of his imagination, or an excuse to deflect blame from his crime. With all these levels of transformation, will Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale of woe change you too? Major Themes Insanity versus rationality In many of Poe's short stories, such as "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrators are madmen and murderers who fail to disguise their lack of rationality with a discussion of their thought processes. However, their stories inevitably reveal gaps in their chains of thought that speak to their descent into immorality and selfishness. In many cases, insanity is interlocked with the narrators' emotional egotism; they are incapable of empathizing with others and think only of their own desire to satisfy their honor or their need to end the disruptions to their lives. On the other side of the equation lie Poe's rational characters, who are capable of consciously setting aside their own emotions in order to logically solve their problems. For

example, C. Auguste Dupin's skill lies in being able to empathize with others in order to solve seemingly impossible cases. Where Poe's irrational characters create confusion out of order, Dupin is capable of reversing the process. Obsession The majority of Poe's narrators are nervous, oversensitive, and given to excessive worrying or strange fixations. In his works, Poe explores the consequences of such obsessive tendencies. In the case of the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart," the protagonist's declarations of oversensitivity are merely a thin disguise for insanity. In other stories, obsession is driven by fear: in "The Premature Burial," the narrator develops catalepsy and begins to take myriad precautions because of his overwhelming fear of being buried alive. Some characters become obsessed by passion, as in the case of the painter in "The Oval Portrait," who essentially abandons his wife for his art. In many of Poe's stories, the narrators' obsessions lead to death and destruction, but Poe also belies this conclusion in "The Premature Burial," in which the narrator's obsessions come to an abrupt end when his fretting leads him to drastically misinterpret an event in his life. Man's relationship with death The fear of death drives the actions of several of Poe's characters. In particular, the narrator of "The Premature Burial" obsesses about the possibility of premature burial, and his fear makes him so paranoid that when he wakes up in the berth of a ship, he mistakes it for a grave and has a terrifying experience for no real reason. At the same time, Poe describes several characters whose response to their fear of death is to avoid it, although the usual result of their avoidance is increased trauma. Prince Prospero and his courtiers in "The Masque of the Red Death" try to shut themselves away and ignore the slaughter caused by the Red Death, but death pays no attention to their barriers and kills them en masse. Similarly, the attempt by the narrator to arrest M. Ernest Valdemar at the point of death in "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" only causes the consumptive patient to die and have his body gruesomely dissolve into a putrid puddle. However, the main character development of the narrator of "MS. Found in a Bottle" is that he learns to accept his impending death and replace his fear with anticipation. The double self Most clearly developed in "William Wilson," the idea of a double or split self is present throughout Poe's short stories. Poe approaches the concept of a double self in two ways. In the destructive model of doubled identity appear such characters as William Wilson, Ligeia, and the painter's wife in "The Oval Portrait." In all three cases, the character has a second body, respectively in the forms of the other William Wilson, Rowena Trevanion, and the wife's portrait, and in each story occurs a struggle between the two sides of the character, in which only one side can be the victor. William Wilson is the only one of the three that survives the battle, but his victory comes at the cost of his soul. The second model of split identity is best characterized by C. Auguste Dupin, who is able to reconcile his two sides successfully. His friend the narrator observes in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" that Dupin reminds him of the old theory of a bi-part soul, where one side is "creative" and the other "resolvent." Whereas the splitting of the self often creates conflict, Dupin combines his creative side and his emotionless, analytical side in order to successfully solve crimes. Furthermore, when faced with opponents such as Minister D., who acts as Dupin's criminal double, Dupin is able to replicate his double's thoughts and find a lawful conclusion rather than an immoral one. Love and hate Many of the crimes of Poe's protagonists are particularly detestable because they involve the death of someone whom they formerly loved. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" claims that he loved the old man but reveals his madness and evil tendencies through his systematic terrorizing and murder of the old man, which he excuses by citing the old man's evil eye. Similarly, the narrator's affection for Pluto and his wife in "The Black Cat" and William Wilson's natural affinity toward his double turn into loathing and rage as the characters sink into alcoholism and sin. In other cases, as with "The Oval Portrait," the victim dies not from murder but from neglect; the painter loves his wife but is overtaken by his devotion to his painting and thus destroys what he loves for the sake of art. Finally, Poe introduces villain protagonists such as Montresor of "The Cask of Amontillado" who hate their enemies but whose hate becomes even more sinister and implacable because they mask it with signs of affection. Montresor's false solicitousness for Fortunato's health is ultimately revealed as a ploy to lure Fortunato to his death. In all of these cases, love and hate are shown to be closely connected, as one can easily turn into the other without warning. Curiosity In "MS. Found in a Bottle," the narrator overcomes his fear of death by invoking the example of the crew of the Discovery and by cultivating his sense of curiosity about the southern regions of the Earth. Similarly, although the narrator of "The Pit and the Pendulum" suffers from frequent fainting spells because of his terror over the Inquisition's plans, he nonetheless chooses to explore his cell and thus avoids becoming totally incapacitated by his distress. In both cases, the ability of the characters to set aside their fear indicates their mental and emotional strength. In "The Gold Bug," Legrand does not face imminent destruction, but is instead driven by curiosity to decipher the clues found on a scrap of parchment, and is ultimately rewarded for his curiosity. In all of these stories, Poe treats curiosity as a sign of the narrator's sanity and intelligence.

The power of human resolve Ligeia is the foremost example of the power of the will in Poe's short stories, as she agrees with the epigraph's claim that "man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." In the end, her will is enough to counteract the usual inevitability of death, as seen in such stories as "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." By contrast, the narrator of "Ligeia" and his second wife Rowena are weak-willed and come to be dominated by Ligeia's memory. Other stories, such as "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "A Descent into the Maelstrm," have characters who seem to face certain death but overcome despair because of their iron wills. "The Pit and the Pendulum" depicts the struggle between hope and despair in sharp detail, but in the end hope wins, and the narrator shows remarkable presence of mind by luring the rats to chew at his strap, thereby freeing him from the swinging blade of the pendulum. CONTEXT Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, and died on October 7, 1849. In his stormy forty years, which included a marriage to his cousin, fights with other writers, and legendary drinking binges, Poe lived in all the important literary centers of the northeastern United States: Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. He was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a lecturer. He introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to American literature, along with the detective story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the nineteenth-century flourishing of American letters and literature. Famed twentieth--century literary critic F.O. Matthiessen named this period the American Renaissance. He argued that nineteenth-century American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman crafted a distinctly American literature that attempts to escape from the long shadow of the British literary tradition. Matthiessen paid little attention to Edgar Allan Poe. Although he long had a reputation in Europe as one of Americas most original writers, only in the latter half of the -twentieth century has Poe been viewed as a crucial contributor to the American Renaissance. The often tragic circumstances of Poes life haunt his writings. His father disappeared not long after the childs birth, and, at the age of three, Poe watched his mother die of tuberculosis. Poe then went to live with John and Frances Allan, wealthy theatergoers who knew his parents, both actors, from the Richmond, Virginia, stage. Like Poes mother, Frances Allan was chronically ill, and Poe experienced her sickness much as he did his mothers. His relationship with John Allan, who was loving but moody, generous but demanding, was emotionally turbulent. With Allans financial help, Poe attended school in England and then enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826, but he was forced to leave after two semesters. Although Poe blamed Allans stinginess, his own gambling debts played a large role in his fiscal woes. A tendency to cast blame on others, without admitting his own faults, characterized Poes relationship with many people, most significantly Allan. Poe struggled with a view of Allan as a false father, generous enough to take him in at age three, but never dedicated enough to adopt him as a true son. There are echoes of Poes upbringing in his works, as sick mothers and guilty fathers appear in many of his tales. After leaving the University of Virginia, Poe spent some time in the military before he used his contacts in Richmond and Baltimore to enter the magazine industry. With little experience, Poe relied on his characteristic bravado to convince Thomas Willis White, then head of the fledgling Southern Literary Messenger, to take him on as an editor in 1835. This position gave him a forum for his early tales, including Berenice and Morella. TheMessenger also established Poe as a leading and controversial literary critic, who often attacked his New England counterpartsespecially poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellowin the genteel pages of the magazine. Poe ultimately fell out of favor with White, but his literary criticism made him a popular speaker on the lecture circuit. Poe never realized his most ambitious

dreamthe launch of his own magazine, the Stylus. Until his death, he believed that the New England literary establishment had stolen his glory and had prevented the Stylus from being published. His name has since become synonymous with macabre tales like The Tell-Tale Heart, but Poe assumed a variety of literary personas during his career.The Messengeras well as Burtons Gentlemans Magazine and Grahamsestablished Poe as one of Americas first popular literary critics. He advanced his theories in popular essays, including The Philosophy of Composition (1846), The Rationale of Verse (1848), and The Poetic Principle. In The Philosophy of Composition Poe explained how he had crafted The Raven, the 1845 poem that made him nationally famous. In the pages of these magazines, Poe also introduced of a new form of short fictionthe detective storyin tales featuring the Parisian crime solver C. Auguste Dupin. The detective story follows naturally from Poes interest in puzzles, word games, and secret codes, which he loved to present and decode in the pages of theMessenger to dazzle his readers. The word detective did not exist in English at the time that Poe was writing, but the genre has become a fundamental mode of twentieth-century literature and film. Dupin and his techniques of psychological inquiry have informed countless sleuths, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes and Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe. Gothic literature, a genre that rose with Romanticism in Britain in the late eighteenth century, explores the dark side of human experiencedeath, alienation, nightmares, ghosts, and haunted landscapes. Poe brought the Gothic to America. American Gothic literature dramatizes a culture plagued by poverty and slavery through characters afflicted with various forms of insanity and melancholy. Poe, Americas foremost southern writer before William Faulkner, generated a Gothic ethos from his own experiences in Virginia and other slaveholding territories, and the black and white imagery in his stories reflects a growing national anxiety over the issue of slavery. In the spectrum of American literature, the Gothic remains in the shadow of the dominant genre of the American Renaissancethe Romance. Popularized by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Romantic literature, like Gothic literature, relies on haunting and mysterious narratives that blur the boundary between the real and the fantastic. Poes embrace of the Gothic with its graphic violence and disturbing scenarios places him outside the ultimately conservative and traditional resolutions of Romantic novels such as Hawthornes The House of the Seven Gables (1851). In Romances like the novels of Hawthorne, conflicts occur among characters within the context of society and are resolved in accordance with societys rules. Poes Gothic tales are brief flashes of chaos that flare up within lonely narrators living at the fringes of society. Poes longest work, the 1838 novel Arthur Gordon Pym,described in diary form a series of episodes on a journey to Antarctica. A series of bizarre incidents and exotic discoveries at sea, Pym lacks the cohesive elements of plot or quest that tie together most novels and epics and is widely considered an artistic failure. Poes style and concerns never found their best expression in longer forms, but his short stories are considered masterpieces worldwide. The Poes Gothic is a potent brew, best served in small doses.