Monday, March 3, 2008
THE MAN THAT WAS USED UP
Is it me or is Poe completely enthralled by teeth? He went on and on over the perfection of Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. The pace of the story was a lot refreshing after Pym, I really wanted to know what the narrator was trying to find out. Yet, I was becoming quite frustrated with the repetition of the “history” of the man, which was never told! How is it that everyone he cornered about the General had the exact same thing to say? Then I had to wonder, did they know the truth and if they did, where was the narrator that he did not know the story, since he was awed by the man when he met him? Poe presented a man that was so physically perfect that it caused instant doubt as to the reliability of the narrator. How is it that he was able to “give the beggarly scoundrel such a thrashing as he will remember to the day of his death”, but couldn’t obtain the truth of the General? Maybe I am naïve, but I was shocked that the General was only a partial man, physically, was anyone else? Also, I have to wonder what statement Poe was actually making. The General had lost just about everything; his eye, teeth, palate, arm, leg, shoulder, was Poe simply telling a story? Or was he asking if colonialism was worth the cost that had to be paid by the people who actually did the colonizing? The Brevet Brigadier General, fought a battle with the Kick-a-poos and the Bugaboos. It had to have been common knowledge, so why didn’t the narrator know? Was he easily distracted, or did he ignore the “world” events as they were happening and so become ignorant of events, historical or otherwise?
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2 comments:
I love where you have taken this. You bring up many good and interesting points. To answer one of your questions, I don't hink that these people truly knew the General, they were just saying what they heard or what was the media or other information generators were telling them. I also didn't know what to make of the body parts, but I like the idea of giving essential items up such as teeth and arms and legs etc for colonization. Brilliant! Also we see some more predjudice going on here with the description of the Kick-a-poos and Bugaboos, and the use of the word savage all over the place again.
A lot of the questions you are asking are what I was asking to myself as I was reading this one. For example, how everyone said the same thing about the General. It made me think that maybe everyone was saying the same things because that is what they had heard from each other. One person started the generic description of him and then it just got passed along.
I was also pretty shocked when I got near the end and discovered what the General's true physical self was like. At first I thought maybe he was some sort of ghost (given some of Poe's other tales) but then as he kept calling his servant to bring him his parts, it became clearer. I can definitely say that I did not even expect such a thing. I admit, I expected some sort of secret about the General to be revealed by the time we got to the end. Poe builds up the General through not only the narrator's personal experience with him but also with the narrator's interviews with other people about the General. The narrator's continual mentioning of the General's too perfect physique foreshadows the coming of something strange at the end and we got it! But I was also confused with the actual statement. I never even thought about colonialism until you mentioned it but it sounds like an interesting view!
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