Whirlpool

Just a few more brief comments about the story by Poe. The maelstrom, in the title, is the most powerful swirl that has enormous destructive energy. It is not fanciful to presume that Poe imagines this force as a force of nature, and in nature, and a force of the mind.
In the story there are at the centre two positions. One involves succumbing to the force and the process is of being sucked into the vortex and disappearing. So, it is a literally destructive energetic system. But there is another position that manages, maybe surprisingly, to survive the destructive force.
Death and destruction seem immanent, and then this:

"It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves."

And then a little later in the text:

"After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremity --and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light- headed. "

In the midst of destruction he becomes 'self-possessed' and finally holds on to a wooden barrel. And that saves him, as the barrel does not, or rather can not sink.