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The Powerlessness of Rationality

One of the major themes of “Manuscript” is the inherent limits of knowledge and rational thought. Although the narrator tries to rely on scientific inquiry to help him make sense of his ordeal, his explorations offer him no answers nor are they of much use. The narrator correctly recognizes the tell-tale signs of a Simoom, but that knowledge does nothing to protect the ship from the storm. When the narrator and the Old Swede are trapped after the storm, their combined experience with ships and sailing is of no use with only two of them in the face of a damaged ship and mysterious weather patterns. The sky eventually goes completely dark, carrying with it the implications of not knowing or comprehending. In the face of this dark abyss, any attempt to calculate or measure is impossible and useless. While trapped on the ghost ship, the narrator spends his time making a study of its construction, armament, and crew without discerning anything about it. The ship is a kind of blank sign that defies signification, without identifying marks or clues to its function. By the end of the story, the narrator rejects scientific terminology altogether, stating that the word Simoom cannot possibly encompass the reality of its horror.

The Danger of Knowledge

“MS. Found in a Bottle” explores not just the limits of rational explanation but the danger inherent in knowing too much. We see elements of this theme in the last moments of the Old Swede, who, noticing the ghost ship first, cries out almost in epiphany, “Almighty God! See! See!” Implicitly, the sight of the ship has brought some sort of understanding to the Old Swede, but that insight also marks his last moment. The ghost ship itself hints at the dangers of exploration and learning. The ghostly captain’s cabin is full of what appear to be arcane manuscripts and scientific instruments. The narrator describes the captain as having gray eyes that are “Sybils of the future,” suggesting that they look deeply perceptive or even prophetic. These details hint that the bizarre and ghostly fate of this ship is tied to the captain’s excessive learning or quest for dangerous knowledge.

The narrator’s time on the ship supports this reading, as it is the ship’s onward exploration, not its ghostly nature that ushers the narrator to his end. The narrator accidentally labels the ship “Discovery,” although it is unclear whether to read the ship itself or the ship’s mission as discovery. Either way, the ship neither imparts knowledge to the narrator nor does it discover anything. Instead, the narrator begins to believe that the course of exploration the ship is on will inevitably lead to destruction, that the very attempt to discover is a course toward death. Accordingly, we never discover the ship’s true fate. Although the narrator speculates the whirlpool might be a kind of tunnel to the South Pole, which would be a great discovery, the story intentionally refuses to give the voyage that honor. Its end is forever shrouded in mystery, signifying that exploration has its limits.

The Terrifying Power of Nature

The dangerous atmosphere of the high seas takes on an almost supernatural power in this story, displaying nature in its terrifying might. Even though a Simoom is a scientific phenomenon, the changes in the weather announcing its arrival and the horrific destruction it leaves in its wake are strange and monstrous. Even the staunchly rational narrator has a “presentiment of evil” the night before the Simoom, signifying how frightening he finds the clear water and strange heat. The Simoom itself proves so dangerous that it’s unclear whether the captain heeding the narrator’s warning could have changed any outcome. It waterlogs the ship, killing almost the entire crew in a single night. Without a full crew to run the ship, the narrator and the Old Swede realize they are fully at the mercy of nature without any real ability to change their fates. For example, they cannot truly relax at the wind dying down because they know that it could signify a huge swell of water that would surely destroy the boat. In fact, the narrator’s presumed death comes not from any of the supernatural phenomena he encounters, but a whirlpool, a natural and not entirely uncommon danger of sea voyages.

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