A Descent into the Maelström [short story]

A fascinating tale of a man's near-death experience in a giant maelstrom or whirlpool at sea.

A man on a ship is being sucked slowly toward a massive whirling pool of water. The bottom equals death and there's no way out. So how does he respond? At first, he gives himself over to his fate. He knows he's doomed. But in a way this is liberating. He "became possessed with the keenest curiosity" about the whirlpool and "positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make." His principal grief? Not his own impending death but rather "that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see."

But once he slides into the whirlpool itself and begins whirling round and show more round its sides, getting ever lower to the bottom (and death), his reaction changes. Like in The Pit and the Pendulum, he begins to try to measure his predicament, seeing all "the numerous things that floated in our company" and seeking "amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below." He then makes an observation that cylinders seem to descend most slowly, so he lashes himself to a water barrel and dives overboard to save himself.

But he's not just a rational scientist here. What's striking, throughout, is his appreciation not only of the terror of the maelstrom but of it's sublime beauty. The sides of the funnel are "perfectly smooth" and "might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon...." And when the rays of the moon do reach the bottom he sees a thick mist "over which there hung a magnificent rainbow...." So he's drawn to this place much like Poe's narrators elsewhere are drawn to death: there's a fascination and even a beauty amid the horror that Poe is always keenly attuned to and that serves to elevate many of his tales. show less