Theresa Matthews

3-05-04

Exploring the Mind of an Explorer 

            Exploring is a demanding journey that is unforgiving and exhilarating all at once.  Extreme conditions in extreme landscapes mystically call to those who are willing to “test their mettle” against uncharted territory and unlimited boundaries. To explore, to search the unknown, to know the unknowing, however, begs a toll on life.  An explorer must leave behind the comfort and security of the known and embrace an environment that is hostile, cold, and heartless.  The complex society of the known world becomes the reliable bedrock of stability compared to the cruel unexplored regions of the unknown.  Mental and physical despair is an everyday occurrence to be conquered.  Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym, and selected non-fiction stories from Ice:  Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration, provide an opportunity to examine the psyche of explorers through incredible trials and tribulations.

            Indicative of explorers is their susceptibility to depression.  Pym’s stow-away adventure in the stowage of a ship becomes an entombment of isolation. Pym “was opposed with a multitude of gloomy feelings” (Poe 20).  Pym’s “solitary and cheerless condition” left him in a “stupor” that he battled continually until he is rescued (21).  Byrd’s isolated “environment was intrinsically treacherous and difficult” and he frequently recalls “bitterly and provokingly” memories that deepened his depression (146).  Creatively constructing methods to occupy his mind, Byrd convinces himself that he has “licked” the “after-supper depression” (155).  Cherry-Garrard and his crew began “to think of death as a friend” (99).  Their journey engulfed “such extremity of suffering” that death seemed the plausible and welcomed solution.  Brainard’s journey of death and starvation leads to his desperate cry, “My God!  This life is horrible; will it never change?” (24). He met the unbearable horrors of gradual death so often that he wrote, “If I knew I had another month of this existence, I would stop the engine this moment”(244).  Again, reiterating the thoughts of other explorers, death is a welcome embrace compared to the unthinkable hardship he endures.  Depression is a condition that explorers learn to overcome or at the very least, come to terms with it.

            Being forced to the “edge of reality” by extreme conditions leaves explorers overwhelmed and nonplussed as they try to describe their ordeals (Sprowl 2).  Poe attempts to convey the tortures of Pym and his mates as they extinguish the last bit of their water supply, “It is impossible to conceive our sufferings from thirst at this point” (103). Unable to pen the emotional and physical duress of Pym, Poe simply states it is “impossible” to describe.  Nonetheless, Poe adequately depicts the extreme conditions which explorers often find devastating.  Conversely, Brainard’s understated and blunt language aptly conveys his state of mind as he chronicles the last days of a starving crew, “What is remarkable is that we hunger for certain articles of food, but at the same time the sense of hunger is absent” (254).  The horror of this journal entry is the lack of emotion from Brainard.  Ironically, his straightforward tone emphasizes the cruelty of his predicament.  The mind’s nagging insistence that the body be fed, but the deteriorated physical condition is beyond responding to the urgent impulse is horrifying.  Brainard realizes he is facing an agonizing death, yet he chooses “remarkable” to denote the occasion.  Similarly, Cherry Garrard reminds his armchair explorers that they “need not fear that I am trying to exaggerate” (74).  The awful reality of his “ghastly journey” unveils terrors that fiction could never voice. 

            Explorers are also exposed to a sundry of environmental extremes that necessarily requires self preservation come before etiquette, social mores, and personal mores.  They must physically and mentally withstand the assault of nature or face certain death.  Fiction and non-fiction alike reveal the mettle of an explorer when exposed to extreme inhumane conditions.  Poe’s fictional Arthur Gordon Pym and his stranded-at-sea mates are fast approaching the “horrors of famine”(92).  In the “interest [of] the preservation of [their} existence,” and in classic Gothic Poe style, cannibalism is the nutritive sustenance that sustains life(92).  Although illusory, Poe encapsulates man’s ability to endure and survive incredible hardships. 

            Brainard’s Antarctic ordeal closely resembles Poe’s interpretation.  Both involve killing one companion in order to preserve life.  Despite repeated warnings, Brainard’s comrade, Private Henry, steals what meager food is available, “seal skin lashing” and “seal skin boots,” which Brainard recounts “may seem insignificant. . . but to us such articles mean life” (248).  Because Henry disregards or is unable to refrain from “stealing the provisions” of the “slowly” starving party, an order is issued to shoot Private Henry.  First Lt. Greely emphasizes to Brainard, “This order is imperative and absolutely necessary for any chance of life” (248).  Both instances reveal the unforgiving environment that forces explorers to make inhumane decisions in order to survive.

            An explorer’s survival also depends upon their endurance and their ability to accommodate mental and physical hardships.  A means to accomplish this feat is to use the mind to escape their severe surroundings.  Pym finds relief from thirst, hunger, and agony when he “fell into a state of partial insensibility, during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination” (Poe 74).  Pym’s images of “dancing girls,” “green trees,” and “ripe grain” are an elixir that suspends his distress if only briefly.  Brainard is not able to lapse into mental bliss, instead his “wretched circumstances . . .counteract” his “universal sorrow” by allowing him to become emotionless and indifferent to the suffering, death, and sorrow of his existence(244).  Then, Cherry-Garrard and his companions realize their quest to find the “Emperor penguins” is “folly,” and “yet with quiet perseverance, in perfect friendship,” they continue the doomed expedition (77).  They could not permit their minds to acknowledge failure; instead, they actively participated in a pretense in a continuance of survival.  Accordingly, Byrd’s intolerable isolation physically separates him from the world, while his mind “possessed the flight of a falcon,” freeing him to revisit his “family at dinner time” (146).  Thus, Byrd is able to leave the uninviting unknown and encounter once again the familiar, the security of the known.  In each of the explorers, the mind is a bountiful resource providing reprieve from intolerable conditions.

            Another constant found in the psyche of an explorer is sublime appreciation of the extreme landscape.  The wonder and awe of the unknown is surreal and often times a spiritual encounter.  In spite of the cruel circumstance of gradual starvation, Brainard is still able to marvel at the wonder of the ice world that so many of his friends have already lost their lives to, “Smith Sound is a beautiful sheet of water” (246-47).  In excruciating pain, emaciated beyond recognition, Brianard writes these thoughts in his journal.  Apsley Cherry-Garrard begins his narrative with the surreal descriptions of the aurora, “an arch of the palest green and orange, a tail of flaming gold. And again the spiritual veil is drawn” (60).  Cherry-Garrard regards the sight as a sacred moment.  He is deeply moved by the fantastic phenomena.  Richard Byrd without companionship and isolated in Antarctica for most of one winter experiences a moment of transcendence and feels “oneness- with the outer world which is partly mystical but also certainty” (139).  Each explorer is connected with the unknown intuitively.

            Exploring the minds of explorers reveals the heroic nature of this rare species.  Bravery and endurance are only part and parcel of their attributes.  They are self-disciplined as they face the most severe of unforgiving conditions, exercising control for self-preservation. Explorers adapt to the unknown region and survive in spite of crushing events that oppress their daring spirit. Most amazing is their ability to purvey the unknown territory and transcend beyond their suffering to reverently acknowledge the beauty of nature.  Alfred Tennyson’s epic hero, Ulysses, sums up the psyche of an explorer, “that which we are, we are,--One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Works Cited

Brainard, David L. “Six Came Back.”  Ice: Stories of

            Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis. 

            New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

Byrd, Richard E. “Alone.” Ice: Stories of

            Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis. 

            New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

Cherry-Garrard, Apsley.  “The Worst Journey in the World.”

            Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed.      Clint Willis.  New York:  Thunder Mouth, 1999.

Poe, Edgar Allan.  Arthur Gordon Pym.  New York: Oxford UP,

            1998.

Sprowl, Craig.  “How Poe Captures the Psychological Essence

            Of Exploration in Pym.”

***Used William E. Lenz’s “Narrative Techniques” as a reference***