The Sublime World in “A Descent into the Maelström”

Abstract

The shocking shipwreck discovery in “A Descent into the Maelström” elicits disparate responses from the public. The fisherman’s cohorts completely deny the incredible occurrence to mollify their consternation. In contrast, the fisherman witnesses the sublime spectacle and chooses to repeat the story to different audiences so that he might build a psychological mastery over the paralyzing event. In fact, their differing attitudes piece together an integrated picture of anthropocentrism: either to deny its existence to safeguard the cloistered anthropocentrism or to imagine a hallucinated mastery to gratify anthropocentric vanity. The general narrator goes beyond anthropocentrism and presents a posthumanist view of the issue. A descent from anthropocentrism into posthumanism enables human beings to have a panoramic view of their appropriate position in the world.