And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. 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 skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.

—The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

IT can be argued then that the greatness of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket lies more in the ongoing reaction to its cliffhanger ending, this flaunting and confounding literary challenge, than to the work itself. The backflips of those who seek to prove that the book is actually a finished work in itself are matched perfectly by the somersaults of others who say the work is an unfinished equation to be answered. Jules Verne, eager to solve the riddle laid out by his American hero, wrote a sequel called An Antarctic Mystery, or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields.^* Verne sought to place Pym firmly within the world of the rational, regardless of Poe’s own lack of concern for this regard. The mystery referenced in Verne’s title is solved when his protagonist’s exhaustive research into Pym’s final scene comes up with an answer to explain everything: magnets. Ever fond of science (or even pseudoscience) over mysticism, Verne came up with this rational explanation, that the white figure was a big Sphinx-shaped magnet that had pulled Pym to his death. H. P. Lovecraft took up the challenge in At the Mountains of Madness. In Lovecraft’s version, Poe’s white figure was revealed to be a penguin. A massive, albino penguin, of a breed that was left there by the alien Old Ones, who had also left behind an incomprehensibly hideous tentacled monster. This creature was slimy and, true to Poe’s symbology if not to the setting, completely black.

Pym’s literary critics, the ones stuck with working over the existing text rather than imagining their way out of it, have struggled valiantly, but with disappointing results. As examples of the many schools of thought on that infamous final paragraph, I offer the following:

A. The ending of Pym is simply a taunt for a possible sequel, a crass attempt to turn this novel into one of several, thereby solving Poe’s considerable financial burdens during this period. This technique also harkens to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, from which Poe borrowed liberally throughout. People forget that, after Crusoe escaped from the island, he and Friday went on to further adventure for another chapter in the wild hills of Italy, chased by ferocious wolves and the like. People forget that part because they want to—it’s anticlimactic, pointless, and silly. Arguing against this theory is the fact that Poe says in the afterword to Pym that there are only two or three chapters missing. Why merely three if an additional volume was the aim?

B. If it is separated from the expectations that a novel has an arc, a direction, and that even the picaresque variety must undergo some final statement, then the ending of Pym fits quite well within the rest of the work. It starts with action, explores the scene, and then ends unresolved, with the reader wanting only to read on. The final chapter feels like every other chapter in the book, and Poe himself once declared that he was first a “magazinist,” an assertion that fits his refusal, or inability, to end this story. Instead of an apposite and structurally determined ending, his finale seems merely to mark the moment when he surrendered to exhaustion and wrote no more. While this may be an attractive explanation, it should be remembered that Poe was a master storyteller, albeit of short-form fiction. Surely, though, a master of the micro could not blunder so largely on the macro level as to have a novel that simply doesn’t end. Right?

C. The ending, the moving into the white chasm with the inhuman, shrouded figure, is an allegory for death. The ending is merely the poeticized destruction of both Pym and Dirk Peters. While it is attractive in its simplicity and for the way it compliments Pym’s author, I object to this rather common read because it’s just plain stupid. First, why, in a book that has taken pleasure in so many gory details, would Poe escape into metaphor for the clincher? Also, how could Arthur Pym then write the preface, which he does, telling us that he is back on the East Coast? No, this is just a stupid interpretation. I usually refrain from name-calling, but it’s true.

D. Just as Poe’s vision of the blackness of Tsalal is perfectly horrific, his vision of this complete whiteness of his Antarctica is perfection itself. How then, as a writer of stories based on conflict (as all tales are), can Poe go forward with the narrative? “And then we got there and everything was just absolutely without flaw in every way” does not make for a gripping story. Or even a feasible story. So, this theory states, the narrative reaches a dead end. It can go nowhere. Conflict, the basis of all storytelling, itself has been negated by an overwhelming worship of whiteness.

* Le Sphinx des Glaces, in the original French.