[HPFGU-OTChatter] The Night's Plutonian Shore

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

Steve/bboyminn
> The mystery is "...Night's Plutonian shore...". Now I
> know that is something of a reference to hell, or to the
> edge or shores of hell, but why is it capitalize the way
> it is?

Ali:
Pure speculation and having not used this particular portion of my
brain for a few years ...

I would suspect that the death reference is in both Night and
Plutonian, and both are referencing different ideas when it comes to
death.  Night, I would venture is the "person" in this, not Pluto, and
I would rephrase the words into something like "Hades' Styx shore,"
with Hades being the god and not the place  Does that make any sense?
I'm sure it probably doesn't make much.

I tried finding some support for this wild speculation of mine, but
nothing from Google to the Poe Decoder wanted to help me.  :)


Steve/bboyminn
> I suspect, in their day, many of these references we commonly
> known. But today, in a world of such great wit and deep
> thinking as "C U L8R" and similar, few would have a clue.

Ali:
First, took me 3 tries to figure out what "C U L8R" meant (and 3 tries
to type it ... correctly?).  And it may just be a function of the
types of people who I've had classes with all my life but more than a
few of them would be able to speculate on the nature of "Night's
Plutonium shore" much faster than figure out what "C U L8R" means.
(For the record, I'm 26, usually right around the age that people talk
about when they talk about "kids today are growing up ...")

Second, I would actually suspect that the references would not be
commonly known in Poe's days.  I have nothing to back up my suspicion
except that the poem specifically reference the narrator's many
"volumes of forgotten lore," which would imply that the narrator's
references in the poem should be somewhat obscure as well.

~Ali, who has felt older and older each day since she realized that
the new college freshmen were born in the '90s.