Essay Questions

What type of allusion does Lord Featherstone employ when hypothesizing about the character of the “Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder”?

Lord Featherstone engages an unconcealed Religious Allusion when he postulates, "that it's part of the provisions laid in by Noah for his long voyage in the ark. So come, let's open it, and see what sort of diet the antediluvians had." The allusion is indicative of Noah’s Ark which is explicitly re-counted in the Bible. Based on the allusion, the Copper Cylinder is cryptic and timeworn occasioning Lord Featherstone’s assumptions. Furthermore, the cylinder’s capability to float is comparable to the ‘Ark of Noah’s’ incredible floating capability.

Explicate the dominant binary in “The Sight of Human beings”.

Humaneness versus Savagery binary. Initially, the ‘humans’ divulge conformist pleasantness which does not bid any hint of antipathy: “Yet their actions, it must be confessed, were far from devilish. Everyone seemed eager to serve us. Some spread out couches formed of the skins of birds for us to sit on; others attended to the fire; others offered us gifts of large and beautiful feathers, together with numerous trinkets of rare and curious workmanship. This kind attention on their part was a great puzzle to me, and I could not help suspecting that beneath all this there must be some sinister design. Resolving to be prepared for the worst, I quietly reloaded the empty barrel of my rifle and watched with the utmost vigilance. As for Agnew, he took it all in the most unsuspicious manner. He made signs to them, shook hands with them, accepted their gifts, and even tried to do the agreeable to the formidable hags and the child-fiends around him.” The preliminary socialization renders them inoffensive beings who would not maltreat Adam and Agnew. Owing to the satisfying warmness that they display, Agnew straightforwardly falls for their duplicity; comparatively, Adam More distrusts them immeasurably.

Later, Adam discerns the creatures’ ferocious disposition: “I saw four men who had just come to the cave: they were carrying something which I at first supposed to be a sick or wounded companion. On reaching the fire they put it down, and I saw, with a thrill of dismay, that their burden was neither sick nor wounded, but dead, for the corpse lay rigid as they had placed it. Then I saw the nightmare hag approach it with a knife. An awful thought came to me—the crowning horror! The thought soon proved to be but too well founded. The nightmare hag began to cut, and in an instant had detached the arm of the corpse, which she thrust among the coals in the very place where lately she had cooked the fowl. Then she went back for more.” This sighting indicates that the creatures are man-eaters who openly feed on humans. Their actuality is based on flesh-eating considering that their habitat is deficient of any form of vegetation that would be employed as vegetables. Adam More sustains that his loathing and wariness towards the creatures was accurate because unqualified human beings would not ratify cannibalism. Accordingly, Adam More distinguishes that he and Agnew are in endangerment because the savages could certainly feast on them.

Additionally, Adam More authenticates the savageness when he recalls, “My situation was now plain in all its truth. They had enticed Agnew away; they had attacked him. He had fought, and had been overpowered. He had tried to give me warning. His last words had been for me to fly—to fly: yes, for he well knew that it was better far for me to go to death through the raging torrent than to meet the fate which had fallen upon himself. For him there was now no more hope. That he was lost was plain. If he were still alive he would call to me; but his voice had been silenced for some time.”

Agnew’s demise is unconditionally accredited to the barbarism of the creatures. Perhaps if he had not been unambiguously gullible, he would not have fallen for their ploys. The savages are ardent predators who entice their prey shrewdly till they are in vantage point to murder him/ her. Based on Adam and Agnew’s happenstance with the ‘humans’ it is apparent that not all creatures that appear like humans are civilized. One can bodily appear human, but internally, he is an unqualified savage.

Provide a psychoanalytic explanation of Adam More’s dreams in “The New World”.

The dreams heighten Adam More’s concentrated trauma. Adam More elucidates, “How long I slept I do not know. My sleep was profound, yet disturbed by troubled dreams, in which I lived over again all the eventful scenes of the past; and these were all intermingled in the wildest confusion. The cannibals beckoned to us from the peak, and we landed between the two volcanoes. There the body of the dead sailor received us, and afterward chased us to the boat. Then came snow and volcanic eruptions, and we drifted amid icebergs and molten lava until we entered an iron portal and plunged into darkness. Here there were vast swimming monsters and burning orbs of fire and thunderous cataracts falling from inconceivable heights, and the sweep of immeasurable tides and the circling of infinite whirlpools; while in my ears there rang the never-ending roar of remorseless waters that came after us, with all their waves and billows rolling upon us.”

Adam More has bottled-up all his misperceptions and dreads in the unconscious. The cannibals are a threat to him because they triggered Agnew’s passing. Furthermore, ‘snow and volcanic eruptions’ are an additional foundation of prevalent endangerment that they have defied it all through the seafaring. The monsters exemplify the hazardous indicators that Adam has come across all through his sailing. He is petrified by the danger that looms since he is still navigating. Adam More is distressed for mislaying his companion which results in the flagrant desolation which is palpable in his dreams. He is not at peace because he presumes that there could be other predestined happenstances ahead of him.