King Arthur Movie Tristan

Time for Poe Friday.






title: The Premature Burial

genre: horror/short story

author: Edgar Allan Poe


first line: There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.


rated: pretty good

The Premature Burial deals with a fear many people have, being buried alive.
As Poe writes:

To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.

The narrator in this short story tells of different instances of people being buried alive. Some were able to make thier way out of the poorly buried coffins, others skeletons were found years later in odd positions, as if they had been trying to escape.

We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.

The narrator then goes on to tell of his own experience. He suffered from a disease that made him pass out and fall into a death-like trance. He would be unconcious for days, he calls it 'cataleptic disorder'. He was terrified of being buried alive one day, so he had the family vault remodeled so that it could be easily opened from the inside. He winds up living in fear and not traveling far from home, in case he falls into one of his fits and is accidentally buried alive.



In the end, he winds up waking up in a dark, confined area, and right away he thinks he is buried alive. It turns out, he was on trip with a friend, on a boat. When a storm comes, they anchor the boat and all go to sleep in the berth, which is small and dark. When he starts screaming, the crew screams back at him to be quiet, he realizes he is still on the boat. After that, he no longer lives his life in fear of being buried alive. Life is too short!

I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts" -- no fustian about churchyards -- no bugaboo tales -- such as this. In short, I became a new man, and lived a man's life.

I liked this short story, the ending was different than what I expected.




Have you read this short story? If not, you can do so here