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3.11 AVERAGE
3.11 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
This novel demonstrates why Poe is celebrated for things other than novels.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
After reading this I know why Poe is best known for his short stories and why this novel is seldom mentioned. The first half of the novel is great but it gets bogged down with long winded info dumps about natural science, major traumatic events not being mentioned again, and plot elements that straight up disappear. The discussions I had in class greatly increased my enjoyment of the novel but on its own it’s only moderately enjoyable.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Cannibalism, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail
Major warning for racism in the second half.
I didn't expect this story to be so good. It's EAP's longest tale at over 100 pages and there's not much dialogue - when I glanced it over it was mostly thick paragraphs. But as I was reading it (and I can't even remember the last time this has happened to me it's so rare) I could not put it down. I finished it in two nights which is amazing super speed for me.
The story is an adventure at sea and the amazingly drastic perils that Mr. Pym overcomes - with such descriptions of physical and mental events the reader easily grasps the gravity of it all. The first half was so gripping I simply could not leave the story until Pym, who is stranded at sea, is rescued. At that point though, the book slows down a bunch as he travels to Antarctica and describes other explorer's journeys and all the islands and their latitude and longitudes. Finally though, (and I knew this was coming, that's why I kept with it) the ships encounter at the end is quite exciting if not tragic. It keeps the reader in anticipation because for so long the crew trusts the savages to be good - but I knew that they were bad (the author reveals this early) and that something terrible was going to happen.
The end of the book, however, was horrible. I don't even know if it was a cliffhanger or some sort of symbolic meaning or what, but fortunately, it happened all in a few pages so it definitely did not ruin the book and I'm still happy to have read the whole thing. The ending was so abrupt compared to the rest of the tale one might say EAP was tired of writing it and rushed to finish it; even though he knew what the ending was to be, it was very ambiguous. I think he intentionally wrote it that way; don't ask me why.
The story is an adventure at sea and the amazingly drastic perils that Mr. Pym overcomes - with such descriptions of physical and mental events the reader easily grasps the gravity of it all. The first half was so gripping I simply could not leave the story until Pym, who is stranded at sea, is rescued. At that point though, the book slows down a bunch as he travels to Antarctica and describes other explorer's journeys and all the islands and their latitude and longitudes. Finally though, (and I knew this was coming, that's why I kept with it) the ships encounter at the end is quite exciting if not tragic. It keeps the reader in anticipation because for so long the crew trusts the savages to be good - but I knew that they were bad (the author reveals this early) and that something terrible was going to happen.
The end of the book, however, was horrible. I don't even know if it was a cliffhanger or some sort of symbolic meaning or what, but fortunately, it happened all in a few pages so it definitely did not ruin the book and I'm still happy to have read the whole thing. The ending was so abrupt compared to the rest of the tale one might say EAP was tired of writing it and rushed to finish it; even though he knew what the ending was to be, it was very ambiguous. I think he intentionally wrote it that way; don't ask me why.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
LOVED this novel. I didn’t love the ending as much as i hoped but the queerness in Pym & Arthur made up for it. If it weren’t for my American Lit class, I probably would have not read it and for those reasons, im thankful.