Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe

The rest of the tale is written in installments like a diary. The narrator of "Manuscript" describes a recent outing from his dwelling onto the deck where he finds a loose sail and paints on it the word DISCOVERY, but the crew raises the sail without noticing the word. He also tries to figure out what kind of ship it is. It seems familiar in so many ways to the kind of vessel he’s used to, but has a strange aura of antiquity at the same time. He later realizes that even the raw material the ship is built from is a mystery to him. It looks like some kind of Spanish oak but changed by unnatural forces. It reminds him of a quote from an old Dutch seaman about a ship growing from the sea.
Past and present don’t mix easily. The ship’s foreignness now seems
to do with age – its crew is aged and its wood is antique – not to
mention that it is gigantic and unpredictable like a ship from a myth
or legend. It is as if the supernatural conditions of the storm brought
past and present crashing into each other. The narrator’s invisibility
shows how out of place he really is.
The narrator of "Manuscript" decides to walk among the crew,
but again he goes unnoticed. The men are infirm and grey, and fiddle around with mysterious instruments, speaking in their strange language. The ship is caught in a dreadful wind its huge sails are not even enough to keep it from heading quickly due south. The journey is rough. The narrator struggles to keep his balance but the crew seem to be immune to the shifting sea.
Frequently, the narrator senses doom ahead but the ship survives. The massive vessel seems almost to be supernaturally able to defy gravity, when it should plunge into the depths, it jumps free of danger.
The ship has a strange combination of antique objects and superior
sailing power. The crew appear to be almost dead but still manage
to guide the gargantuan vessel expertly and are unfazed by the
currents. The ship and crew seem to be creatures or objects of the
sea itself – one can’t imagine them on land or starting out on this
voyage. There are depths and layers of explanation that we don’t
have access to, making the horror that threatens the narrator a
massive unknown quantity. The narrator is a self-proclaimed man of
reason and methodical thought, but this world is beyond the ability
of reason to comprehend.
The narrator of "Manuscript" describes his sighting of the ship’s captain, who is similar to him in height and size but looks remarkably ancient. Every feature on his face seems like a record of time. Around his quarters are the same scientific instruments and antique charts that the narrator has witnessed across the vessel, and the captain, too, speaks to himself in an unintelligible mumble, which seems to come from faraway even though he is standing near. The whole crew are creatures of an antique time, and they baffle and fascinate the narrator.
Poe often picks out a character to align with his narrator, either as a
kind of double, or in this case as a figure of contrast. The captain is
also a sailor, accomplished, and academic, like the narrator, but lives
in a dreamlike, other world and makes no sense. Even his
instruments of science and navigation are unusable. This puts the

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