Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Morrison considers Edgar Allen Poe’s novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, in which a native named Nu-Nu dies and Peter and Pym, who are also on the same boat, pass through the white curtain of a waterfall. It is the whiteness, the conclusion of the book states, that kills the black man.

Morrison believes that “[n]o early American writer is more important to the concept of African Americanism than Poe” (32). In Poe’s novella, a white shape rises up to meet the characters after the death of the black character. Such white forms are common in literature, especially in the conclusions to text, in which they often appear alongside black figures who mare dead or rendered impotent. Morrison writes that the white forms are a commentary and kind of “antidote” (33) to the shadowy presence of black figures.

Why was this gothic literature replicated in the New World? Morrison posits that it might have been an attempt to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. She also writes that it was an attempt to escape their fear of freedom, ironically what they most coveted. Romantic literature could not escape from what Poe called “the power of blackness” (37).