In “MS. Found in a Bottle,” by Edgar Allan Poe, an unnamed narrator writes his tale; he sails on a ship that gets hit by a hurricane, throwing all but him and a Swede overboard. For five days they endure the hurricane until the sun disappears and “eternal night” surrounds the two. Another ship, glowing red, appears, and a huge wave sweeps away the Swede and tosses the narrator on board, where an aged and feeble crew seems unable to see or hear him. With them he stays until the ship meets a whirlpool and sinks into the darkness, presumably ending the narrator’s life. Throughout the story, the narrator states and restates his clinical mind’s lack of imagination. Poe underlines this levelheadedness to give the reader confidence in the words of the narrator. This enables Poe to incorporate supernatural images subtly. The purposeful deaths of the crew and unwilling death of a confused narrator then catch the reader off guard. A matter-of-fact portrayal and gradual incorporation of the bizarre brings an eerie realism to the narrator’s hellish end.
    “MS. Found in a Bottle” opens with the narrater explaining that he has no sense of imagination, no appreciation for superstition, logic overwhelming fantasy. “Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age –I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition.” Eloquence and imagination mean nothing to this man but a waste of time. Well-off by birth yet emotionally and physically distant from his family and from his country, he feels no particular attachment for these or anything else. His family’s great wealth afforded him, however, a good education. Therefore, logic, rather than love, remains the dominating force behind all of the narrator’s actions.
    His mind is entirely oriented to the analytical. Constantly he thinks and speaks scientifically. “…we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance.” Even while about to die, the narrator speaks with superiority. Poe’s success in creating a startling tale stem from his unequaled aptitude at assisting the reader in suspension of disbelief. Prefacing the story with such descriptions does just this; bringing an air of technicality through to the end adds a level of plausibility to the story.
    Eeriness begins with a depiction of abnormalities in the sky. “… I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N.W. It… spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea.” Learning that this threat comes from a hurricane exemplifies the narrator’s pragmatism in fearing only what is logically worthy of fear.  Such descriptions tie the other-worldly hell the narrator eventually encounters to reality. The creepy yet scientific images become increasingly phantasmagoric, and Poe seamlessly glides the reader from a world of order into an universe of darkness and ghouls; “… their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before… I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities… until my very soul has become a ruin.” As the story goes on, an inability to comprehend his surroundings pulls the narrator into another side of himself, and he brings the reader with him to a fearful but quiet acceptance. Whether it is to death or to an eternity of silence, never being noticed by these creatures with muted voices, doom is certain.
    Practical and frigid, the narrator is accustomed to a mundane world of rules. The icy, uninhabited southern pole represents an escape. He falls in line with the frail, tentative, crew, waiting anxiously for the ruin he senses coming upon them, or rather the ruin they are speeding to find. “It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge –some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.” Although he fails to understand where or why the ship is going, he knows “destruction” is the outcome. However, he feels neither fearful nor distressed. “The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step; but there is upon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair.” Mirroring the crew, he anticipates the end with exhilaration. When the ice disappears and the ship begins to spin, falling into darkness, the ocean spirals down into death, into nothingness. He is shaken only slightly, even in the last words he writes, and his and and the crew’s calmness about their eminent doom displays a grotesque masochism, an unnervingly enticing suicidal nature.
    Poe’s use of language and character gently persuades the reader, turning his daunting abyss from surreal into conceivable. The transition from normality to another world is gradual and methodic, creating a realistic ending that leaves the reader in shock. “But little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny –the circles rapidly grow small –we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool –and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering, oh God! and –going down.” After such rational and systematic language throughout the story, Poe’s sudden transition from the calm of attempting to explain the strange occurrences into frenzied ranting is startling. The reader is left with the hauntingly realistic image of a hell on earth.