MS. Found in a Bottle: Related Works on SparkNotes

“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe

Like “MS. Found in a Bottle,” Poe’s later short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” explores a staunchly logical narrator faced with frightening and mysterious circumstances that test the limits of his rationality. Poe would return to this theme in his work often, exploring what he saw as the limits of science in the face of poetic imagination. However, while the ghostly ship in “MS.” has no logical explanation, “Usher” maintains ambiguity up until the end, as if challenging the reader to hold on to their skepticism in the face of such strange occurrences.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick also explores a doomed sea voyage and the theme of dangerous knowledge. Critics have drawn parallels between the narrator of “MS. Found in a Bottle" and Melville’s Ishmael. Like Poe’s narrator, Ishmael decides to ship out on a voyage because of a kind of emotional restlessness that knows no cure. Both stories also use their narrator’s obsession with scientific detail as a foil to the dangerous and inscrutable mysteries of the deep.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Critics have noted parallels between Poe’s “Manuscript” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” “Ancient Mariner” also tells the story of the last survivor of a doomed sea voyage, and both sailors encounter supernaturally bad weather and a ghost ship crewed by the dead. Poe greatly admired Coleridge’s work, and even alludes to “Ancient Mariner” in “MS.” with the mention of an albatross (“At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross”).

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Like “MS. Found in a Bottle,” Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness looks at the dark side of exploration and knowledge. Both works use a physical journey to what their Western contemporaries considered wild and barely charted territory to explore psychological terror and the limits of understanding. Conrad himself loved “MS. in a Bottle,” calling it “a very fine piece of work,” and critics have noted a parallel between the last, horrified cry of both their narrators.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

The scholar Daniel Hoffman notes that Poe’s narrator’s use of concrete detail to establish his credibility recalls earlier adventure tales such as Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. However, Swift and Poe use the format of the adventure tale for very different aims. Poe uses realistic detail to highlight the impossibly strange and frightening nature of the unknown, whereas Swift uses fantastical details to highlight the ridiculousness of his own society.

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