Gee's Point is a riverside location at West Point that marks both the pull of departure and the difficulty of return. Augustus Landor reaches it during an icy afternoon, drawn by the thought of continuing downriver to somewhere unknown; later, Edgar Allan Poe reaches it after a clandestine night journey and climbs back toward the Academy. The place recurs as a threshold between the Academy and a world beyond it, without offering either man an easy passage.

Setting and Approach

During an afternoon when ice has crusted the grounds, Landor makes his way to Gee's Point as cadets assemble for parade. The frozen walkways magnify his footsteps, yet he reaches the point without interference. From there, he can see a lone dugout working downriver through the mist, its oarsman bare-armed. The sight sharpens his thought of continuing along the river to a place he has never been, an impulse he cannot fully explain.

The point is also a place where others approach Landor. Lieutenant Meadows follows along the path and stops ten feet behind him, deferentially braced, as when he had escorted Landor on an earlier visit. His arrival makes the location a site of observation as well as solitude: even at the river's edge, Landor remains within reach of the Academy's authority.

Landor at the River's Edge

Landor's visit gives the point a meaning of possible escape, but not a completed departure. The downriver dugout offers a concrete image of onward travel; Landor considers that he, or someone, might simply keep going. The thought echoes his first day there, while the ice-bound grounds and the approaching officer keep him physically and institutionally tethered to West Point.

Poe's Night Return

In a separate episode, Poe reaches Gee's Point around one-thirty or two in the morning after a hurried journey back toward the Academy. Exhausted by his exertions, he rests before starting the steep ascent to the main grounds. He then arrives at the door of South Barracks without further incident. The route makes the point a literal threshold: the river-side approach gives way to a difficult climb and return to the cadet quarters.

The contrast between the episodes gives the location its recurring force. Landor looks downriver and imagines continuing away; Poe reaches the point while trying to get back before his absence is discovered. Gee's Point thus holds departure and return in the same view, while the paths beyond it lead either toward an unknown elsewhere or upward into the structures of the Academy.