As we briefly discussed in class on Tuesday, both Melville
and Poe display an affinity for disorienting the reader. While reading Melville
I thought the same thing, that a certain atmosphere surrounds the stories of
his we've read. In his stories I witness shock, contrast, and mystery in a way
that disorients me, not to the extent of surrealism, but perhaps in a similar
way to the disorientation that Poe’s stories evoke. I think both writers
portray their narratives within the confines of certain atmospheric elements,
in which the reader’s emotional response to this disorientation allows for the
understanding of an intellectual meaning.
We see this in Poe’s stories all the time, especially in
something like "The House of Usher." Inexplicability and disorientation pervade
this narrative. The story’s climax, when Usher’s sister returns from the dead
and stands in the doorway of her brother’s bedroom, only has significance
because of the “scarcely intelligible nature” that the narrator previously
witnessed in their relationship (p. 662). The reader’s confusion mirrors the
narrator’s confusion. This visceral fear and confusion allows for the creation
of meaning: that Usher’s relationship with his sister, perhaps also between
“the family and the family mansion,” entailed something dark and mysterious and
worth running in terror from (p. 655). A cycle of Usher’s emotions frames the
narrative; it continually moves from terror to comfort and then back to terror
again. This cyclical pattern also disorients the reader forces the cycling of
their emotions.
Melville plays with readers’ emotions in a similar way. The
narrator of “Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” sustains a
shocked and inquisitive tone when encountering the paper mill. This tone evokes
confusion and disorientation. Captain Delano Benito Cereno cycles through the emotions of paranoia and self-consolation in
a way that evokes insecurity and disorientation in the reader.
Both Poe and Melville disorient their readers in ways that
reveal the meanings of their respective works.
I think there's also a sense that we like to be disoriented to some degree--that it creates suspense, a sense of mystery and the new. But we only like it to a certain degree. Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" and Melville's "Moby Dick" are both so disorienting that readers were (and perhaps remain) overwhelmed and baffled by them.
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