Jared Wright
11/20/12
Archive Assignment Rough Draft
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial”
Edgar
Allan Poe had a captivating way of telling horror stories. From poetry to
fiction, Poe’s diligent approach to cohesive writing and reliability to the
audience set his works apart from most other American authors published during
the nineteenth century. His ideas were thoroughly thought out, craftily worded,
and specifically structured in attempt to terrify the reader; therefore, his
success was heavily based on the audience’s perception of his work. Transitioning
his creative story structures into popular themes among American society’s
current affairs and social norms, Poe was able to establish a developing
rapport with his readers. His works were often published in local newspapers
where they were accessible to common folk living the Northeast. One way Poe was
able to commandeer the attention of his readers was by presenting typical fears
among society, such as being buried alive in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper periodical,
“The Premature Burial”. The presentation of the hushed taboos of American
society and the narrator’s eventual overcoming of his cripple fear are prime
reasons why Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial” should be included within
the canon of early American Literature. Born
January 1st, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe was the son of travelling
actors (www.poemuseum.org). He became accustomed to hardship at a very young
age when his mother passed away of Tuberculosis. His father left Poe up for
adoption, and he was taken in by John Allan and his wife. Allan was a
successful tobacco merchant; therefore, Poe was able to attend some of the best
private schools along the east coast and eventually enrolled at the University
of Virginia. Oddly, Allan did not send Edgar away with enough funds to survive
on his own at college, resulting in a gambling addiction, and Poe even had to
burn his own furniture to keep warm (www.poemusuem.org). So he dropped out of the university and moved
back to Richmond, only to find out that his foster mother had passed away, like
his birth mother, of Tuberculosis. This tragedy led him back to his hometown of
Boston, where he enlisted at West Point Academy, and published his first
collection of poems. The Academy expelled Poe after only eight months of
service, and Edgar Allan found his way to Baltimore, where he found out his
foster-father, Allan, had passed away.
He then married his cousin Virginia, who was only fourteen years old at
the time of their matrimony. The couple was very much in love, and very much in
poverty; which resulted in the Poe family relocating time and time again along
the Northeast. While spending time in Philadelphia, Poe worked for the
Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, where he published “The Premature Burial” in
1844. Less than three years after its publication, Poe’s wife, Virginia, died
of Tuberculosis. This loss devastated Poe, and a few years later, he too,
passed away (www.poemuseum.org). Poe’s background
indicates that he had an unpleasantly familiar relationship with death and the
process of dying. An orphan by the age of three, adversity was something Poe
was forced to adjust to at a very young age. These experiences may explain some
of the content within his poems, specifically, “The Premature Burial.” Obviously,
dealing with grievance was not an exclusive issue to Poe, as many of his
readers too, experienced the hardship of losing a loved one(s). Poe recognized
this and utilized these themes to create some of the most terrifying short
stories in the history of literature. Up to this point in American literature,
many writers such as William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, and even fellow dark
romanticist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, presented themes of death and dying in their
writings, but they typically did so in a religious sense. These authors discussed
the consequences that arise after death based on one’s obedience or disloyalty
to God. Hawthorne even questioned the morality of science, and its manipulative
powers that contradict the Christian religion. Poe, however, focused on the
mental torments of fearing death itself, and the psychological battle one must
endure to overcome it. “The Premature Burial” takes this theme even further, by
presenting a protagonist with catalepsy who is plagued with thoughts of being
buried alive. During
the 19th century, when medical technology was still primitive, death
was a morbid yet controversial topic among society. Even morbid thoughts of
unfortunate circumstances, such as being buried alive, made their way into
common conversation. Poe had this in mind when he wrote “The Premature Burial”
for the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, emphasizing his own troubles within a
story that not only relates to its audience, but also effectively portrays
society’s perception of a surprisingly popular taboo subject. These perceptions
were developed by real life examples of people awakening after they’ve been
assumed dead, and buried. Steve
Semiatin references one of these horrific tales in a periodical published in
History Magazine, “In the 1850s, a young girl in South Carolina supposedly died of
diphtheria. She was quickly interred in the family mausoleum because it was
feared the disease might otherwise spread. When one of the family’s sons died
years later, in the Civil War, the tomb was opened to admit him. A tiny
skeleton was found on the floor just behind the heavy stone door. (History Magazine 11.5 (2010):9-11)”
Polish
researcher Natalia Wójcicka points out
in her article “The Living Dead: the Uncanny and Nineteenth-Century Moral Panic
over Premature Burial” that premature burial was such a frightening topic that
legislature was passed in order to prevent it:
“ [n]o body shall be received [into the morgue] unless
a statement on the part of an attending physician or Coroner, whether he has
found the following signs of death or not, is with it: First – Permanent
cessation of respiration and circulation. Second – Purple discoloration of the
dependent parts of the body. Third – Appearance of blistering around a part of
the skin touched with a red hot iron. Fourth – The characteristic stiffness
known as rigor mortis. Fifth –Signs of decomposition.
(“To Stop Premature Burial” 1899: 3)”
Furthermore, American
entrepreneurs even found ways to capitalize on this common fear. Wojcicka
points out that a few companies patented an alarm system for coffins, just in
case one was to awaken from their “terminal” state: “In the spirit of the
Industrial Revolution, innumerable plans for vaults allowing proper
ventilation, with their own food and water supplies and the means of
communicating with the outside, were drawn. Blueprints of so-called “alarm” or
“safety” coffins, equipped with mechanisms that would set off an alarm signal
in response to the slightest movement of the body within, were created,
patented and sold.” Not only did these “safety” coffins exist, they were a
popular item, selling thousands a year (USPTO, patent number 4,367,461). Steve Semiatin addresses in his
periodical in History Magazine that “Even
our heroic first president, George Washington, supposedly had such a dread of
being buried alive that he ordered his servants to allow his corpse to remain
in his bed for three days, to be jabbed and prodded with needles to verify his
death before being laid to rest. (History Magazine 11.5 (2010):9-11)”
This societal phobia of premature
burial, or Taphophobia, was rooted
within a lack of medical technology and procedure in pronouncing someone as
‘deceased’. In many cases medical conditions that may cause its victim to
appear to be dead, such as the narrator’s case of catalepsy, lead physicians to
pronounce a patient as deceased without any procedure to confirm that the
subject was in fact deceased. According to George K. Behlmer’s journal
article of British studies: “Late-Victorian fears about premature burial
constituted a moral panic‟ in the sociological sense of that term” as they
contained the three traits characteristic for this sociological phenomenon
which “involves popular overreaction to a perceived threat,” has a “tendency to
occur when ethical boundaries seem blurred,” and becomes a “process by which
disciplinary agents – police, prosecutors and judges – help vilify the socially
marginal. (2003;42(2):206-235” Although Behlmer’s points out that Taphophobia
was generally an overreaction to folklore and actually stemmed from a lack of
legislation requiring a physician to physically examine the patient before
pronouncing him or her dead, the fear itself still existed.. For someone who
suffered from a disease such as catalepsy, thoughts of waking up in a coffin
could lead to madness as it does for the narrator in the story. His vulnerability
allows the reader to connect to the character while developing a relationship that
allows Poe to convince him or her into
sharing these same fears. This becomes evident when the narrator describes the
perimeters of his condition:
“Its
variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day
only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is
senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still
faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers
within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips, we
can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again
the duration of the trance is for weeks—even for months; while the closest
scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any material
distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute
death.” (Poe, “The Premature Burial”)
Even
if the fear of premature burial was over-exaggerated during this period, such
conditions could lead anyone to believe it was a possibility.
Despite the grave nature of the
short story, Poe offers an interesting relief from the narrator’s overbearing
psychological condition. While upon a ship, he falls asleep in a small wooden area
beneath the ship and dreams that he has been buried alive only to awaken with
an epiphany:
“There arrived an epoch -- as often before there had arrived --
in which I found myself
emerging from total
unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly
-- with a tortoise gradation -- approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal
day. A torpid uneasiness. An apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care -- no
hope -- no effort. Then, after a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then,
after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the
extremities; then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during
which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought; then a brief
re-sinking into non-entity; then a sudden recover. (“The Premature Burial”)”
He realizes through
somewhat of a near death experience that he has become a victim of catalepsy
and through this realization, is able to overcome his crippling fear. There is
no divine intervention or outside therapy that advocates this realization, but
rather, it occurs through a true experience. Astoundingly, Poe references
psycho-therapy concepts introduced by Sigmund Freud, who was not even alive
during the time of the story’s publication, that suggest one may overcome fear
by facing fear itself, which in this case, is death. This empowerment of the
self is a refreshing aspect of early American literature and an important
representation of dark romantics such as Edgar Allan Poe.
The canon of American literature honors works which
exemplify major themes within a time period, and Poe’s “The Premature Burial”
should absolutely be part of this collection. His diligent approach to writing,
where the reader is the main focus of his message, is a creative and refreshing
reminder of the power of fiction. Additionally, Poe’s allusion to the power of
the self in overcoming fears as crippling as death is well ahead of the time
period. Therefore, it is important that scholars recognize this attributions,
and never forget the power of social taboo’s and their effect not only on
literature, but the psychological consequences that arise from them.
