It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of reposing in my reading chair with an Edgar Allan Poe short, so feeling a bit guilty about that I settled down earlier today with a tale as its name suggests, that focuses on the abhorrent thought of premature burial (brrr..goose pimples).
I remember watching a documentary not so long ago about the fear of premature burial, and it’s a fear which revealed itself in this documentary as being one most prevalent during the Victorian Age. Not surprisingly in 1844 the ‘Master of the Macabre’ exploited this fear and published a story in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper which played up to that anxiety, in what turns out to be rather an unsettling, yet thoroughly entertaining tale.
The story’s narrator is ailed by the nervous condition catalepsy, whose symptoms can wrongly suggest that the sufferer has expired, left the mortal coil, or more to the point – kicked the bucket! Consequently the narrator is obsessed to the point of madness that he is going to fall victim to this most abominable of fates, and so he reveals a number of measures he has implemented to ensure he can escape should he a wake from a bout of catalepsy and find himself in such a dire situation. This is not before he speaks of a number of the known cases of premature burial he is aware of, and this sets the story up nicely for the narrator’s revelation of his obsessive fear, and how it has affected his day-to-day living.
The narrator continues showing more and more erraticism before the story reaches a climax which is deliciously flavoured by Poe.
All in all a great little read in which Poe doesn’t fail to engage his talents for suspense and terror.
Rating: 
Notable Quote:“To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called.”
*This story was read as part of the iPoe Reading Challenge
About Rob
Good to see you getting back to Poe! I’m having fun with my weekly Poe reading. It’s always so different from anything else I’m immersed in at the time.