In response to the information that you provided for me I would like to thank you for your time and effort in the explanation! Even though your response was very imformative and helpful, I still have some questions that have come about during my continuation of trying to completely understand the story. This story like many of Poe's contains a variety of undefined explanations that may never come to conclusion. If infact Bedloe had truly witnessed the events in the forest could it be possible that he is merely a spirit in search of his final destiny? I also have confusion towards the end of the story. The narrator seemed surprised by the death of Beloe. Was he? Additional Questions: 1. How long ago did this story take place from the time that the narrator is telling it. He met Bedloe in the early 1800's and he mentions something about how now(1845) he dares to venture to record the apparent impossibility as a matter of serious fact. I am not understanding what he is recalling and what he is relating it to. 2.Does the hyena have any specific importance other than to reassure Bedloe that he must be witnessing nothing other than a dream. 3.The morphine that Bedloe was taking, was that on his own will, or was that part of an "experiment" by Templeton? 4. Is there any important devices in this story other than irony?

I really appreciate you taking the time to read this. If there is any additional information that you could provide my confused mind with, i would be most grateful! Thank you

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2001

Answers

I already responded to this on e-mail. I am still at a loss about anything peculiarly deep concerning the hyena except that the exotic animal fits in as a bridge to the past in India. Poe is also interested in the apes clambering about the city. Bedlo is totally under Templeton's hypnotic control but in this vision promenade he is notably absent. The use of names, symbols and dreams is significant in deloping this impression of a bridge to another tragic life and the catastrophic mirroring of that tragedy.

here however, a modern reader is somewhat bewildered where he should be greatly impressed. Poe's irony, symbolism and ambiguity is far more prfound than any mere shocker or excursion into the bizarre. In modern stories these elements are completely blended like a tone poem as opposed to a symphony. For Poe the bizarre, the supernatural is a teaser allied to a competing rational explanation. They run parallel, take turns and blend often. In the end however they often separate for the clarity the audience of his times demanded. Poe presages modern writing where fantasy, incredible absurd irony, and a host of gritty bound symbols and realism are mashed together quite comfortably.

If Poe would have liked the freedom to dwell in such ambiiguity not all his stories permit this. The Ragged Mountains really leaves the peasant sesne of mystery surrounding Templeton and his trustworthiness in the dust in the hands of a naive narrator. For us it seems to fail though most kids and readers get the supernatural shocker just as presented in innumerable TV and movie horror tales.

Proof that Poe preferred the borderland, the natural state of his own conscious at its profoundest and most moving, melancholic level is perhaps seen in his preference for his tale Ligeia. Though Ligeai appears at the end the blend is total, the emotion(awe-horror) left hanging at the end with no explanation. Pym also leaves the emotion and the plot uncharacteristically hanging in midair at the boundary of the supernatural. Not unusual in that Pym and Ragged Mountains have things in common. But Poe is not a modern and somehow instead of getting credit for expanding the frontier even the wisest critics see mainly a flawed gothic tale.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2001