University of El Salvador

Western Multidisciplinary Campus

Literature II

The Premature Burial by: Edgar

Allan Poe
Katherinne Hernandez
Carmen Lima
 Edgar Allan Poe

Born on January 19, 1809, in

Boston, Massachusetts, writer, poet,
critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's
tales of mystery and horror gave
birth to the modern detective story
and many of his works, including
The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall
of the House of Usher, became
literary classics. "The Raven," which
he published in 1845, is considered
among the best-known poems in
American literature.
ELEMENTS OF DRAMA
Characters
Setting
Plot
Point of view
Theme
Charaters
Story # Principal Characters Second characters
1 Wife of a congress
member
2 Victorine Lafourcade Julien Bossuel
Renelle
3 Artillery official
4 Young lawyer from
London Edward
Stapleton

5
Setting
Story Setting
1 Baltimore
2 1810 France
3
4 1831 London
5 Richmond Virginia
plot
External Conflict
People are thought to be dead but are
not and they cut open, examined, and
buried.
Internal Conflict
Even when the narrator knew that he
suffered from catalepsy he descovered
that he was obssessed with death
Exposition
It is the fact -- it is the reality -- it is
the history which excites. As
inventions, we should regard them
with simple abhorrence
the Passage of the Beresina
the Earthquake at Lisbon
the Plague at London
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew
Rising action
The Narrator mentions
several people who have
been buried alive.
Climax
Attacks of catalepsy and
the narrator awakens in
pitch darkness in a
confined area. He cries
out but is immediately
hushed.
Falling action
He realizes he's in the
berth of a boat, not a
grave.
Resolution

The event snaps him out of

his obsession with death
Point of view
3r prson that turns into a 1st person
narration
Theme
Being buried alive is, as Poe puts it, "The
most terrific of extremes ever faced by mere
mortals". His horror story explains the terror
experienced by those who have been buried
alive, as well as their diseases that gave the
conjecture of the victim being dead. Normally,
the victims went into deep comas which in
Poe's time were often mistaken for death, so
they were accidentally buried alive. In some
of his examples, the people were discovered,
dug up and saved from a horrible fate.
 Terror
The central theme of "The Premature
Burial" is extreme terror and its effects
on the human mind. The narrator's terror
is the result of his dwelling obsessively
on morbid thoughts.
 Isolation
Being cut off, being isolated from the world of
the living, is in part the cause of the narrator's
abnormal fear of being buried alive. The thought
of being alone and abandoned, without hope of
ever seeing another human being, petrifies the
narrator. Ironically, to avoid the possibility of
premature burial, he avoids leaving his home to
be among people. "I hesitated to ride, or to walk,
or to indulge in any exercise that would carry
me from home," he says.