SOURCE: “Poe/Script: The Death of the Author in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” in New Orleans Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, Fall, 1987, pp. 51-60.

In the following essay, Pahl explores Poe's questioning of the idea of selfhood in Pym, as evidenced in his handling of the narrator.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is a text riddled with mysteries, not the least of which involves Pym's seeming annihilation at the story's end:

And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us [Pym and Dirk Peters]. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.¹

Most of the commentary on this passage centers exclusively on the meaning of the “shrouded human figure” and...