Simone Rieck

16 March 2004

Exploring the Genre

            Originally, I found myself interested in the motivations of the authors of travel/exploration literature and the effects the motivation had on the language of the author; however, I soon realized that I was confusing their motivations for traveling with their motivations for writing.  This problem finds its peak with authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, who did not participate in the Antarctic exploration about which he wrote.  Limiting the research to the writings of Scott, Byrd, and Poe, one can only speculate the true motivations of the authors.  As readers, we can assume that Scott made his expedition for his country and kept a journal only to log the events of the voyage.  Based on the language of Byrd’s memoirs, a reader might guess that he was on a journey towards self-discovery.   Poe’s novel is unique, not only because he did not take part in an expedition, but also because it is Poe’s only novel.  Was Poe just cashing in on a craze of the time?  The three works represent three sections of a diverse genre.  One, a field note/journal, is cut and dry non-fiction, simply stating facts and events; the second, a memoir, could be considered creative non-fiction, marking the inclusion of deep thought and the transition from explorer to author; the third, a novel, is fiction, with a made-up story, blended with researched facts.  The language found in the three pieces is diverse, along with their effects on readers.  None of the three could be considered widely read; yet all three authors are famous for one reason or another.  Even though the three types of writing are much different, they are still members of the same genre – literature of space and exploration.  Ultimately, there is a desire to explore and relate to the unknown, especially in nature.  In this sense, there are ties between the authors of field notes, memoirs, and novels because they all have their takes on the experience.  Nature is unpredictable and uncontrollable.  Scott, Byrd, and Poe, in their own ways, convey the beauty and threat of the Arctic and Antarctic, so those of us who may never witness the landscape can still enjoy the experience.

In the realm of nature writing, the memoir is perhaps the most effective and beautiful.  A memoir, according to the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, is “a narrative account typically written by an individual that depicts things, persons, or events the individual has known or experienced” (258).  Narratives allow the reader to experience the author’s thoughts and interpretations about his or her experiences as well, which, in the case of aesthetics, is most valuable.  It is aesthetics, or the value of beauty, that is most captivating about nature.  Elle Tracy, another experienced Antarctic explorer, explains the connection between exploration and nature writing:

It has to do with transfixing a spirit, infusing a life with possibilities, and with cementing a previously tenuous self-confidence.  Today, as I move in our culture, I only need a bird’s song, a Braille inspection of moss, an urban view of a full moon, a weathered sky, a child’s smile, or a senior’s wise nod to remind me of how natural I am in the world I live – Antarctica’s gift to me.  (398)

Before they were talented soldiers, brilliant explorers, or skilled writers, Scott, Byrd, and Poe were humans, capable of taking in all that nature has to offer.  Thanks to their daring efforts, readers not only get to take pleasure in a new landscape, but they get to enjoy someone else’s interpretation of that landscape.  A field note allows the reader a glimpse into the experience of the author as it happens.  The writer does not have the opportunity to reflect, but the reader does.  Armchair explorers appreciate this opportunity because they get a first-hand peep into the expedition of the writer.  Along the same lines, novelists use nature as a sure way to captivate their readers.  Nature is a common ground; every individual has experienced nature in some way or another, regardless of whether they saw it as beautiful or not. 

To aid in the discussion of nature in exploration/travel literature, it may be useful to think about differences between the three types of writing.  For instance, I.S. MacLaren discusses exploration/travel literature and focuses on the evolution of the author.  According to MacLaren, there are “four stages of individual texts” (41).  The first stage, the field note or log book entry, “marks the first effort by the traveler … to mediate experience in words” (MacLaren 41).  Explorers, such as Scott, did not go on their expeditions with the intention of writing about them.  Like most people, Scott kept notes, with only one guaranteed reader – himself.  Byrd’s memoir falls under MacLaren’s second stage, or the “writing-up of the travels either at their conclusion or following a stage of them” (41).  It is in this stage, MacLaren contends, that explorers tell their stories with “continuity and purpose” (41).  In other words, Byrd was able to organize his thoughts and experiences in order for them to be read and understood by a wider audience.  MacLaren explains that field notes are tentative, “unsure of what lies ahead tomorrow,” but journals and memoirs can “transform that quality into assurance or despair by means of foreshadow based on the subsequent experience of that tomorrow’s events and of succeeding days” (42).  It is in the second stage as well as the third and fourth stages that the traveler is transformed into an author.  The last two stages are written entirely with the audience in mind.  The traveler’s words are often revised and rewritten by editors, or they may be replaced all together by the words of a ghostwriter.  It is in the final stages that the fictionality of the work may be questioned.  If the traveler is no longer the author, how reliable is the information?   Poe’s novel is altogether a work of fiction, yet it is based on and written around research and facts from true expeditions.  This stage is most sought after by readers because the images are well developed, and drama is introduced.  Instead of a list of events and facts, humanity is established, offering romance and despair. The chart offered under Objective 2b. explains how nature or humanity might be represented in each of the three forms:

John Granahan connects exploration literature to Romantic Literature, popular in the 19^th century.  He explains, “A key value of Romanticism was a profound respect for, and awe of, nature and natural forces, [and] one of the persistent themes of Romantic literature deals with the relation of the individual to the forces of nature” (2).  Britain’s Robert Falcon Scott was a seasoned explorer and member of the Royal Navy when he accepted another mission to Antarctica.  The journey seemed to be a test for explorers.  Who could conquer the deadly cold?  Scott made more than one journey to Antarctica before the harsh climate took his life.  Luckily, he kept a journal, which allows for readers throughout time to understand the severity he and his comrades experienced.  He begins most entries with the temperature, which ranges from -2° to -40°.  He also describes the surface and the atmosphere.  Occasionally, Scott connects the icy landscape to something more familiar to readers, such as a desert or a beach.  In the second entry he describes, “We have struggled out 4.6 miles in a short day over a really terrible surface – it has been like pulling over desert sand, not the least glide in the world” (103).  Later, Scott describes the day in an interesting manner; he states, “Beautiful day – too beautiful – an hour after starting loose ice crystals spoiling surface” (105).  This description tells readers that even the desirable can be undesirable when suffering such unkind conditions.  What the explorers hope for is consistency, and Antarctic climate does not offer that.  As the days go by, Scott becomes more and more concerned with the conditions of his men.  His entries become dedicated to recording their last days and meals, and then they end, as he becomes a victim of nature.

Byrd’s experience of Antarctica is very different from Scott’s.  His exploration takes place over two decades later, and his mission was to establish an effective meteorological base farther inland than the existing one.  Since so many had traversed the continent before him, Byrd was as prepared as possible for his excursion.  He maintained radio contact with his colleagues, and had a heater most of the time.  Still, he faced the cruel climate of the South Pole alone, with only his thoughts to keep him company.  Byrd’s memoirs not only epitomize nature writing, they also offer a deep exploration into the human psyche.  What does one think about when he or she is alone in nature?  Byrd describes his experience:

There were moments when I felt more alive than at any other time in my life.  Freed from materialistic distractions, my senses sharpened in new directions, and the random or commonplace affairs of the sky and the earth and the spirit, which ordinarily I would have ignored if I had noticed them at all, became exciting and portentous.  (139)

His statements describe correspondence in the purest sense.  Byrd, alone in Antarctica, became one with nature.  He goes on to describe things to the minutest detail.  For example, he illustrates one of his first experiences with the snow, “…I discovered some extraordinarily fluffy snow.  It was so light that my breath alone was enough to send the crystals scurrying like tumbleweed; so fragile that, when I blew hard, they fell to pieces.  I have named it ‘snow down’” (139).  Perhaps the most striking realization Byrd faced were the effects the dangerous climate had on his body and his consciousness.  He reveals:

Habit has set up in the core of the being a system of automatic physio-chemical actions and reactions which insist upon replenishment.  That is where conflict arises.  I don’t think a man can do without sounds and smells and voices and touch, any more than he can do without phosphorous and calcium.  (145)

Byrd had several revelations in his very own Walden Pond.  Like Thoreau, his isolation was a chosen occurrence.  He had some modern conveniences for some period of time, but his overall experience was one of self-exploration.  He suffered in the cold, but he also faced the challenge of remaining sane in an isolated state and under the harshest conditions. 

            So how does Edgar Allen Poe contribute to the genre of exploration/travel literature?  Born from his imagination and personal (and perhaps financial) interest in Antarctica, readers are given The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.  Poe had multiple interests in the South Pole.  First, Antarctic exploration was of great importance in the 19^th century, as the Arctic was slowly becoming mapped and “complete.”  It offered a new goal to countries eager to be the first and the best in mapping the globe.  Second, Poe had an interest in the Symmes Theory, which claimed that the poles of the earth were open, and inside of those poles existed an entirely unknown civilization.  He seemed to be intrigued by the mystery offered by this theory, and it offered a blank canvas, on which he created an unfamiliar land and a new civilization.  William E. Lenz explains, “In the Antarctic – as in the Gothic – each person confronts oneself and comes face to face with the unresolvable ambiguities of reality” (36).  Typically a gothic writer, Poe found himself reversing gothic conventions to fit this new landscape.  Instead of the Gothic black, he resorts to a habitat “icy white in color, bleached or drained of natural variation” (Lenz 35).  Poe maintains his awareness of the ambiguities of Antarctica.  Few people are truly aware of the land, so he offers insight through his own imagination:

The trees resembled no growth of either the torrid, the temperate, or the northern frigid zones, and were altogether unlike those of the lower southern latitudes we had already traversed.  The very rocks were novel in their mass, their color, and their stratification; and the streams themselves, utterly incredible as it may appear, had so little in common with those of other climates, that we were scrupulous of tasting them, and, indeed, had difficulty in bringing ourselves to believe that their quantities were purely those of nature.  (135)

Similar to the “real” Antarctic explorers, Pym and his comrades faced the challenge of traversing an unfamiliar land and surviving in the frightful icy climate of the continent.  In addition, Pym faced the new and unique challenge of understanding a new group of beings.  This is where Pym’s narrative stops being one of nature writing and takes on the conventions of other novels.  No longer are readers experiencing an exploration narrative; now they are into the realm of fiction as Pym confronts the natives of Tsalal.  Lenz explains, “The burden of Pym is to prepare the reader to accept the impossible, to acknowledge the possibility of “some exciting knowledge” that is literally beyond comprehension” (35). 

            Nature is easily comprehended.  It is a universal bond among beings.  Most every person has seen the sky, or water, or a blade of grass.  What is significant is each individual’s interpretation of that experience.  This same convention can be applied to exploration literature.  Scott, Byrd, and Pym/Poe all experienced Antarctica, but each writer offers a unique take on its landscape and brutal climate.  Readers may not travel to the icy continent, but they can understand the experience by reading field notes, memoirs, and novels and connecting the writers’ stories to their own lives and own experiences with nature.  As long as humans are able to walk outside, nature writing will never become obsolete.

Works Cited

Byrd, Richard E.  “From Alone.”  Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration. Ed. Clint Willis.  New York: Adrenaline, 1999.  138-156.

Granahan, John.  “Why the Antarctic Has Given Rise to So Much Compelling Literature.”  LITR 5738 Midterm, 26 Feb. 2002.

Lenz, William E.  “Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym and the Narrative Techniques of Antarctic Gothic.”  CEA Critic 53.3 (Spr/Summer 1991).  30-38.

MacLaren, I.S.  “Exploration/Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Author.” International Journal of Canadian Studies 5 (1992).  39-68.

Murfin, Ross and Supryia M. Ray.  The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: St. Martin’s, 2003.

Poe, Edgar Allan.  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.  Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1994.

Scott, Robert Falcon.  “From Scott’s Last Expedition: The Journals.”  Ice: Stories of Survival from Polar Exploration.  Ed. Clint Willis.  New York: Adrenaline, 1999. 102-117.

Tracy, Elle.  “The Southern End of the Earth: Antarctic Literature.”  Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook.  Ed. Patrick D. Murphy.  Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.  395-399.