Dirk Peters In The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym

Further supporting the commingling of the races is the figure of Dirk Peters, an embodiment of Cooper’s idea of equality: a combination of a white father and an Indian mother. Peters is one of the more splendid characters in Edgar Allen Poe’s novel The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, which places him on the completely opposite side of the spectrum as almost every other character in the novel.
Dirk Peters becomes the ameliorative representation of race in Poe’s novel, a blend between the dark and light skin. He indicates a deliberate and resistant step away from utterly reading white as good and black as evil since he is neither and both. Reading him as distinctly the most worthy of characters in the novel makes it easier to read between the lineі of racial frontiers. As they are in
Upon their first confrontation, Pym has no doubts about drawing Dirk’s horrific appearance: a “deformed…demon,” having a fierce smile and a short but brutally muscular body (Poe 459). This “brutalization” of Dirk’s figure may have been stated in Pym’s mind frequently were it not for the narrator’s continuous trust on him (Dayan 244). However, by the end of the story, Peters has changed in the eyes of Pym and became less the surrealistic nonbeliever Pym primarily represents than a fitted man loyal to his landsmen. He is not, as Ki Yoon Jang describes him, a “tamed wild dog,” a foolish being obeying the powers of a master (Jang 365).
Instead, Peters explains not only to maintain excellent physical capability but mental sturdiness as well. It is often Peters who is the more reasonable of the descendants, such as when he concludes a method of recovering rations from the belly of their sunk ship or when he preserves Pym from sinking on the Tsalal Island (Poe 487). This rise of a man of color furthers the novel’s story arch, again explaining how color can outdo