The Premature Burial

Name: The Premature Burial
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Premature Burial" opens with a meditation on the horror of being interred while still alive, arguing that the boundary between life and death is often shadowy and that suspended animation can easily be mistaken for true death. The narrator supports this claim with several purportedly true cases. In Baltimore, the wife of a respectable congressman apparently died and was entombed in the family vault; three years later, when the vault was reopened, her skeleton was found outside the coffin, revealing she had revived, struggled free, and died again trying to signal for help. In France in 1810, Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, spurned in love and married unhappily to a Monsieur Renelle, apparently died and was buried; her former suitor Julien Bossuet disinterred her coffin to cut a lock of her hair, discovered she was alive, revived her, and fled with her to America, where they lived for twenty years before returning to France, where a court upheld her refusal to return to her legal husband. A case from the Chirurgical Journal of Leipzig describes an artillery officer, injured by a fall from a horse and believed dead, who was buried hastily; days later, cemetery visitors heard sounds from his grave, he was exhumed alive, and briefly recovered before dying during a galvanic battery experiment. Another case, from 1831, concerns Mr. Edward Stapleton, a London attorney believed dead of typhus, whose body was later stolen by body-snatchers for dissection; application of a galvanic battery during the procedure revived him, and he later recounted having been dully conscious throughout his ordeal. The narrator then reveals his own lifelong affliction with catalepsy, a disorder causing trance-like states resembling death, sometimes lasting weeks. He describes the dread this induced, obsessive fear of live burial, disturbing dreams (including a vision in which a spectral figure shows him all the world's graves, revealing that the "sleepers" are far outnumbered by those who struggled after burial), and the elaborate precautions he took: modifying his family vault to open from within, equipping his coffin with padding, a spring-release lid, food and water, and a bell-rope tied to a corpse's hand for signaling. Despite these precautions, he one night awakens in darkness, jaw bound, confined in a cramped space, smelling earth, and concludes in terror that he has been buried alive in an ordinary grave away from his prepared vault. He screams — and is answered by rough voices. It transpires he had fallen asleep in the cramped berth of a small sloop on the James River near Richmond, Virginia, during a gunning expedition with a friend; the "earthly smell" came from a cargo of garden mould, and the jaw-binding was merely a silk handkerchief he had used in place of a nightcap. The men who roused him were the sloop's crew and laborers unloading it. This terrifying but non-fatal experience produces a permanent cure: his spirit undergoes a revulsion that restores his mental and physical health, he abandons morbid reading and thought of death, and his catalepsy itself vanishes along with his charnel fears. The tale closes with a reflection that such sepulchral terrors, though real, must not be dwelt upon obsessively, lest they overwhelm the mind.

By Edgar Allan Poe · First published 1844 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Horror, Psychological Thriller · 6,382 words

First lines

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust. They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most intense of "pleasurable pain" over the accounts of the Passage of the Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the fact -- it is the reality -- it is the history which excites. As inventions, we should regard them with simple abhorrence.

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The Premature Burial is listed on Textopian as a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, dated 1844 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Date: 1844 CE
Language: English
Genres: Gothic Fiction, Horror, Psychological Thriller, Dark Romanticism, Suspense
Length: 6,382 words
Structure: 1 section, 46 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Discussion starters

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Similar titles

Genres

Gothic Fiction — The themes of death, burial, and psychological horror are central to the narrative, embodying the characteristics of Gothic literature.
Horror — The story evokes fear and dread through its exploration of premature burial and the psychological torment associated with it.
Psychological Thriller — The protagonist's mental state and the exploration of catalepsy create a tension-filled narrative that delves into the mind's fragility.
Dark Romanticism — The emphasis on individual experience, emotion, and the macabre aligns with the principles of Dark Romanticism.