as a choice of adjective, or as complex as why the narrator thinks something is the way it is. For example, in the first paragraph, opinion is used twice - once covertly and once quite openly. The covert opinion is the description of the ship as being “beautiful”, and the open opinion is that the “stowage was clumsily done”. Both these opinions serve purposes within the description. The covert opinion indicates to the reader that the narrator can appreciate beauty, and that he knows enough about ships to be able to tell when one is beautful. The open opinion also shows that the narrator knows about ships, as he can tell that the reason why the ship was lopsided was that the “stowage was clumsily done”. The second advantage of using a first-person narrative in a description is conjecture. First-person narratives are very open in their styles, in that they allow for a lot of things that normally wouldn’t be permissable in a third-person narrative. A first-person narrator is able to make deductions about the world around them, and Poe has used this to his advantage, especially in the second paragraph. The narrator here has “made many observations . . . upon the structure of the ship”, and has eliminated unlikely possiblilties and favoured more likely ones. He has used conjecture and deduction throughout the paragraph in order to give the reader a clear picture of just how much he does know about the ship. This is an effective technique, and gives a sense of realism and therefore credibility to the narrator, which helps the story to become a lot more readable. In conclusion, I would like to reiterate what this essay has discussed. This essay has been about how Poe uses the description of environments in his narratives. I have explained this usage with close reference to several short stories by Poe. The effects of the first-person narrative on description have also been discussed in det...
