The Oblong Box (short story)

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"The Oblong Box" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844, about a sea voyage and a mysterious box.

[edit] Plot summary

The story opens with the unnamed narrator recounting a summer sea voyage from Charleston, South Carolina to New York City aboard the ship Independence. The narrator learns his old college friend Cornelius Wyatt is aboard with his wife and two sisters, though he has reserved three state-rooms. After conjecturing the extra room was for a servant or extra baggage, he learns his friend has brought on board an oblong pine box: "It was about six feet in length by two and a half in breadth." The narrator notes its peculiar shape and especially an odd odor coming from it. Even so, he presumes his friend has acquired an especially valuable copy of The Last Supper.

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The Oblong Box

The box, the narrator is surprised to learn, shares the state-room with Wyatt and his his wife, while the second room is shared by the two sisters. However, for several nights, the narrator witnesses his friend's surprisingly unattractive wife leaving the state-room every night around 11 o'clock and going into the third state-room before returning first thing in the morning. While she is gone, the narrator believes he hears his friend opening the box and sobbing, which he attributes to "artistic enthusiasm."

As the Independence passes Cape Hatteras it is caught in a terrible hurricane. Escape from the damaged ship was made via lifeboat, but Wyatt refuses to part with the box and issues an emotional plea but was denied by Captain Hardy. Wyatt decides he cannot part with the box and returns to the ship, ties himself to it with a rope. "In another instant both body and box were in the sea--disappearing suddenly, at once and forever."

About a month after the incident, the narrator happens to meet the captain. Hardy explains that the box had, in fact, held the corpse of Wyatt's recently deceased young wife. He had intended to return the body to her mother but bringing a corpse on board would have caused panic among the passengers. Captain Hardy had arranged, then, to register the box merely as baggage. As passage was already registered with Wyatt and his wife, so as not to arouse suspicion, a maid posed as the wife.

[edit] Publication history

Poe originally offered "The Oblong Box" to Nathaniel Parker Willis for the New Mirror, but Willis suggested it was better suited for the Opal, edited by Sarah Josepha Hale.^[1] It was first published on August 28, 1844, in the Dollar Newspaper in Philadelphia.^[2] It was also published in the September 1844 issue of Godey's Magazine and Lady's Book,^[3] also edited by Hale.^[4] Poe had just moved to New York (via steamboat) just a few months before its publication. His wife, Virginia, had begun showing signs of her illness about two years before in 1842.^[5]

[edit] Adaptations

A 1969 film directed by Gordon Hessler starring Vincent Price and Christopher Lee carries the name The Oblong Box. Other than the title, the two share little in common.

"NBC Short Story" aired a dramatic reading of "The Oblong Box" in the 1950s. It is available online.

The CBS Radio Mystery Theater—which ran from January 1974 to December 1982—did an adaptation of the Oblong Box which aired on January 8, 1975.

[edit] References