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During the nineteenth century, there was a common fear that plagued the Americans and Europeans alike; this was the fear of premature burial. Doctors during this era lacked the modern medical knowledge that we now posses and would sometimes pronounce people dead who were in comas or even unconscious. The assumed dead would then awake during the funeral service or even once buried. After this began to become a common occurrence, the people started to make many precautions in the burying the dead. They would bury a person with a crowbar and shovel in case of premature burial; the person could get himself or herself out of the coffin. Another method was to leave the dead lying out of their caskets for a week to assure that they were dead.
The most popular method, however, was the Bateson Revival Device, which was a bell attached to the hand of the deceased that was connected to a tube to the above ground. The alarm would sound at the slightest movement, signaling that the person was not dead. This great and common fear was present in even the writings of many American and European writers. Most significantly were the writings of Edgar Allen Poe. Poe incorporated the idea of life after burial in many of his stories.
This could be because Poe himself was afraid of this happening to him. Whatever the reason may be, premature burial was a common theme is the stories of Poe that made the stories more exciting because the events could possibly happen in real life. In the story, "The Tell-Tale Heart", a man who is tormented by the eye of his elderly living companion is driven to murder. After the murder, he cuts the man up and places his body parts in the floorboards and cleans everything up. After a while, the man starts to hear a noise, as he describes "A low, dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. " The sound of the old man's heart which he had heard hours before in the dark bedroom before he killed him.
The sound finally drives him to reveal his deed to the police. Although it would have been physically impossible for the old man to still be alive under the floor, the idea of live burial is still present. The narrator's madness, or as he calls it, "acuteness of senses, " allows him to hear the old man's heart, beating as if he was still alive. Another story with the same theme of premature burial present, "The Fall of the House of Usher. " In this story, Roderick Usher invited his friend, the narrator, to come visit him because his sister and himself are deathly ill.
As the story progresses, Madeline dies and is buried in the tomb of the house. A short time later Roderick and the narrator start to hear noises while reading a story, Roderick believes that they have buried her alive. As soon as he says this Madeline appears and kills Roderick, the narrator then leaves the house as it crumbles before him. In this story, there are many possibilities for the explanation of Midline's return.
It is possible that she was in fact dead, and the house brought her back to life in order to murder her twin brother. The other explanation, which I believe is the more probable one, was that she was buried in the tomb. Her fingers and robe were covered in blood, a sign that she had to struggle to get out from the tomb. There are also many similarities between this story and the "Tell-Tale Heart. " Roderick and the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" both suffer from "acute senses. " They are able to hear the sounds of the dead as if they were alive and with them. Poe, as he does in "The Tell-Tale Heart, " conveys the fears of premature burial through the characters. A final example of Poe's strong use of the premature burial theme, is that of the appropriately titled, "The Premature Burial. " In the story Poe describes many different instances of persons undergoing the horror of premature burial.
Poe describes in first person narration, the tortures a man goes through because of his fear of live burial. The man suffers from catalepsy and would sometimes go into long states of lethargy. After a nightmare he had, he becomes deathly afraid of being buried alive and starts to take extreme precautions so that if he is buried alive, he will be able too easily exit the vault. He also dares not to venture out of his house or trust anyone, out of fear for his life. The narrator ends up having his most horrid nightmare come true. He is buried alive while on a trip away from his house.
This story most clearly shows Poe's fear of premature burial, and what a prominent problem it was during his lifetime. The idea that such thing as live burial could be a common worry is almost laughable by today's standards. The medical technology today allows us to know with 100 % accuracy that a person is dead, but the people in the 19 th century did not have these advantages and made it difficult to tell if a person was actually dead. As shown in his writings, Poe was one of the many who shared the common fear of this dreadful event, which set the tone for many of his most thrilling and dreadful stories.
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Research essay sample on Edgar Allen Poe Premature Burial
