Fairy Tale Spotlight: MS. Found in a Bottle [Story Review]

[Spoiler alert!]

"MS. Found in a Bottle" is a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe, and it was first published in 1833. It is not the first Poe story I read. That would be "Metzengerstein," a story of which I had little to no compulsion to write a review for. But here we have my first very interesting Poe story!

"MS. Found in a Bottle" is about a man who goes on a rather disasters ocean journey that leads to a very surreal and spooky ending. It's not entirely clear what happens, but it seems like the ship he was on travels into some sort of otherworldly void on the brink of an abyss. Yeah, this does kind of sound like a Poe story, I guess.

A lot of Poe's writings are so flowery that it is sometimes difficult to figure out what exactly is going on. At some point, the main character does seem to transfer to a large, what could be a, ghost ship... filled with old, possibly dead, sailors. They don't seem to care that he is among them.

Honestly that's some Grade A spooky bullshit right there. I was most definitely drawn into this surreal world. I guess the best thing about this story is that nothing in it is concretely explained. It's more like some guy just found something horrible and spooky, recorded it the best that he could, and that's it! It leaves a lot up to interpretation.

I did like this story a lot, but I should think the writer did better stuff than this. It feels more like a dark afterthought than a fully realized story. A good start though! I recommend it as a good starting place for reading the works of Poe. I honestly think "Metzengerstein" is skippable, but that's just an old reader's opinion.

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