“As the mass of putrefaction slipped over the vessel’s side into the water, the glare of phosphoric light with which it was surrounded plainly discovered to us seven or eight large sharks, the clashing of whose horrible teeth, as their prey was torn to pieces among them, might have been heard at the distance of a mile. We shrunk within ourselves in the extremity of horror at the sound.”

The young boy Pym decides to run away from home to travel as a stowaway on a whaling ship to start an adventure. His best friend, a sailor, hides him on board. Now, Pym is extremely excited about the experiences he will collect. But soon, his hideout turns out to be a fatal trap. Poe achieves to let the reader feel how it’s constantly getting more dangerous and how Pym gets trapped more and more while being caught by the claustrophobic insanity.

No sooner does he survive this horror when the next horrible event is already initiated. Poe doesn’t give the reader a minute’s rest. This is so typical of his writing style. Every moment is filled with thrill, which is almost nail-biting. The tension is built up until it finally reaches its climax – its climax full of horror.

The story is written in the first-person perspective; and this is how we can directly look into the soul and mind of the protagonist Pym, who experiences many fabulous things during his trip and also finally approaches the South Pole, which, at that time, was completely unknown. (The South Pole and the Antarctic were totally unknown when this book was published. In E.A. Poe’s version the place seems to be more misanthropic than it actually is.)

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was Poe’s first complete novel, which also resembles his short stories and poems. It’s the same style and the same subtly rising horror which seems to drive the protagonists to insanity – bit by bit. Since books reflect the authors’ souls, we don’t really want to scrutinize Edgar Allan Poe’s soul. It is not for nothing that he once said: “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Bericht_des_Arthur_Gordon_Pym