Descent Into The Maelstrom Analysis

In his story, “Descent into the Maelstrom”, Edgar Allen Poe writes of an old fisherman who claims to have gone through the monstrous whirlpool, “Moskoe-strom,” lasting the duration of 6 hours. The fisherman acts as a guide to the narrator as he leads him up the mountain Helseggen, where the old fisherman tells him the story of how his hair turned grey in a day. It might be argued, though, that this story was nothing short of a tall tale. There are numerous points in this his story that indicate the old man might be lying. How could his hair turn grey in a day? Why did he show so little emotion when describing the death of his brothers? Why would his old shipmates, who sailed nearby waters, not believe his story after seeing the condition he

From the very beginning of this passage we get a good glimpse of this. After leading the narrator up the mountain, he begins to talk about the day he survived the maelstrom. He prefaces the story saying “It took less than a single day to change these hairs from jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?” (1). Firstly, while the idea that stress can cause hair to grey is a fairly well-known myth, there is little science to back it up at this point in time. While it has been observed that people under stress get grey hair sooner, for it to occur in a day is nothing short of an extreme exaggeration (Ballantyne). Secondly, almost immediately after stating the overwhelming fear this event instilled in him, the old man threw half his body over the edge of the cliff, hanging on only by his elbows. The narrator notes how “carelessly” he does this, possibly indicating his own doubt (1). Being “fifteen or sixteen hundred feet” in the air, the large majority of people wouldn’t even step closer than one foot from the edge of the cliff, while this old man with weak limbs and, “frightened at a shadow,” was able to hoist his entire body over the edge (1). Even the narrator was terrified just from watching the old man to the point where he had to sit