The “Thing Power” Of Shipwreck and the Diagrammatic Antarctic Travel Narrative in Arthur Gordon Pym

Published in 1838, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, centered on Antarctic travel, stands as Edgar Allan Poe’s sole novel. Limited by the knowledge of his era, where the true nature of the Antarctic remained veiled, Poe infused his travel narrative with an extensive cartographic imagination of the polar region. Furthermore, its open-ended conclusion delegates the task of mapping the pole itself to the reader. Significantly, the novel does not present a defined Antarctic itinerary; instead, the progression of the travel narrative is diagrammed by the “thing power” of multiple, unforeseeable shipwrecks. This study takes the Antarctic travel narrative within The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as its object of analysis. Employing Deleuze’s diagram theory, it examines how the “thing power” of the shipwreck drives the characters toward the Antarctic across three distinct stages, analyzes the generation of each stage’s characteristic trajectory, and reveals the profound geographical philosophy underlying Poe’s construction.