In this episode, for the second time in the story, Pym is buried alive for a gestatory period. From here on the story takes an oneiric turn. The atmosphere becomes stifling. Mysterious shapes and figures move behind a giant white veil that descends from the sky like a cataract and is inexorably sucking them into it. The world takes on the hue of the blinding white light that followed primordial darkness.
White birds fly in and out of the curtain and suddenly a giant shrouded figure looms up.
Likewise, the woman Poe has for so long refused to penetrate is finally penetrated with his entire being, as he is sucked back into the mouth of creation itself. In Hitchcock a white screen is slowly overwhelmed and torn apart by crows fluttering back and forth, an eerie vanquishing of light, as at the end of the credits the screen goes completely black, a cosmic void. So Poe sees spiritual salvation in the Mother's all encompassing embrace, whereas Hitchcock saw only maternal damnation. Whereas the climax of The Masque of the Red Death annihilates humanity, the Narrative of A. Gordon Pym brings awed silence before Nature's majesty. Peters, the only survivor of the adventure, is rendered mute and unable to finish the incomplete narrative.