II. The story proper is told in the most convincing, matter-of-fact way, yet we are conscious all the time that the language of the old man is rather that of a trained writer than of an ignorant fisherman, and here Poe sacrifices the personality of his hero to vividness of incident. What he wishes to accomplish is to impress us with a terrible experience. He does not care to make us see the narrator as a man, yet the story is not devoid of touches of strong human interest; if it were it would be less powerful. The fisherman and his brothers will not take with them their sons on their perilous fishing trip. The youngest brother is carried away in the first blast of the tempest with the mainmast to which he had bound himself. The oldest brother selfishly drives our hero from the ring in the deck.
There are remarkable touches of realism in the story. It was just seven by the old man’s watch when they started for home; later, when the tempest is upon them, it is discovered that the watch had run down at seven o’clock, and they are behind the time of the slack water in the whirlpool.
III. Vividly descriptive phrases abound in the narration, and figures of speech give powerful interest to the imagination.
“We came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream.”
“The roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek—such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels letting off their steam all together.”
“How foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power.”
“We were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances—just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.”
IV. It is meant that our interest should center in the story itself. Accordingly, when the narrator has finished his tale the story is finished. We are not further interested in the listener, or in the old man.
V. It is almost unnecessary to say that the tale is pure fiction, and an example of brilliant exaggeration. As a matter of fact the maelstrom is a whirlpool lying where Poe places it, and it has been made noted by many other accounts than this of Poe, most of which are exaggerated, but none of them so brilliant in execution as Poe’s. The difference between high tide and low tide in this vicinity is very great, and every twelve hours vast masses of water must be moved into the fiord and out again through narrow channels and rough rocks. The currents resulting are dangerous to navigation, and there are numerous whirlpools and eddies besides the great maelstrom itself. Ordinarily, however, ships traverse the passage without danger; but when in conjunction with high tide the winds blow fiercely, the sea for miles around becomes highly perilous to small vessels.