Post #3- Alyssa DiFlora

For this post, I want to analyze the idea of Edgar Allen Poe as a racist Western white man. When we ended the class discussion idea, Dr. Ross brought up an interesting stereotype about Poe saying that some people thought that Poe was a racist. From my reading of Poe's novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", I think that Poe is not a racist. He is not mocking slavery, as he is just trying to personify the horror of being trapped on a ship with many limited resources and tons and tons of people. It is a very interesting narrative being that it is from a white man's perspective. As I explained in class, I feel that this work of Poe stands out because it is not a generic slave narrative. It is from the perspective of a white man take a simple glimpse at the life of a African slave during that time period. I think that the purpose of Poe writing this narrative was to explain to the whites what slave-life was like in order to make them understand what slavery truly was, rather than having the people shrug it off like it was nothing. As we discussed in class, the narrative also appropriate the "white man" during the time period.

With this concept of Poe and racism discussed during class, I decided to do some research and found this article ( http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/34372/edgar-allan-poes-true-horror-racism/ ). According to the article, Though the cook and company are eventually overthrown, more blatantly skewed black characters soon appear, and they resemble a woefully familiar stereotype." (Belonsky, 1). In the reading, Pym and the other survivors are picked up by another ship and they end up in a location surrounding the island, only to find "savages". In the reading Poe also mentions that they are the only white men of the island and called the inhabitants of the island, wretches. 

With all of this being said, as a reader of the 20th century, I can understand how people of the time period felt that Poe was a racist. Personally, I feel that Poe used this language to create a image in the readers' minds in order to convey the condition and living of the time period for the slaves. The evidence that I found was very interesting and I am glad that I can share this discovery with the class.