The Premature Burial

Throughout the story, the narrator struggles with a fear of death. His condition of catalepsy, which is the fear of being buried alive—being aware while smothered by darkness and impending death with no possibility of escape—functions as a metaphor for the human condition and the inevitable encounter with death. The narrator’s obsession with death manifests in symptoms that deeply disturb his everyday life, illustrating the importance of Conquering Fear or Else Succumbing to It. Too much dreaming about death has created a shadowy veil of gray over his life; he no longer exercises, and he fears leaving his home for any reason. Yet he even views his home as unsafe, and remodeling the family vault and securing oaths from his closest friends does little to assuage his fears and obsessions.

By avoiding everyday activities, obsessing in detail over accounts of premature burials, preparing his family vault for his own death, and often falling into unconscious trances that sometimes last several months, the narrator is not really living at all. At the very least, he does not lead a fulfilling life. The narrator’s name is never revealed; he simply functions as a vehicle for rationalizing and heightening a fear of premature burial. His paralyzing fear is, ultimately, of death itself: He is terrified by what he perceives as impending oblivion and an inevitable encounter with darkness and claustrophobia.

All the narrator’s attempts to control his fear are futile, suggesting that his fear is fueled by various forms of the unknown or wholly “Other” and the inability to control the unknown. His research into premature burials, rationalizations, vault remodeling, and agoraphobic behavior cannot control what he progressively sees as an inevitable fate of premature burial. Ultimately, it is unclear whether it is the slim but realistic possibility of premature burial that haunts the narrator or the inevitability of experiencing sheer terror itself. Like the number of premature burials that the narrator notes must often go unnoticed, this experience remains out of reach, mysterious, and unknown. Anticipation and dread of burial drive his fear. As the narrator puts it, he is afraid of being “nailed up in some common coffin—and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave” (Paragraph 38).

In the exposition, when he is explaining why being buried alive is the most terrifying possible event, the narrator wonders where the soul goes during the unconscious, deathlike state that often precedes premature burials. He mentions an “unseen mysterious principle” (Paragraph 3) that animates—and reanimates—life. Much like his fear of premature burial, this principle is beyond the narrator’s control. The line between life and death is unclear and clouded in his mind, sowing seeds of doubt that reflect the growing moral panic surrounding premature burial in the 19th century. Moreover, no matter what he does to try to control and prevent his fears, he remains afflicted by a mysterious disorder with no known cause, and a looming dread that, like death, cannot be controlled or escaped.

Underlying his fear of death is the narrator’s conviction that “true” events are more terrible than fictional ones. Yet it is his intangible, emotional world of obsessions—his ability to conjure and tell compelling narratives—that creates and sustains his debilitating phobia. He admits that he suffers little physically, but his “moral distress” is infinite; despite the narrator’s claim that truth is stranger than fiction, it is his emotional distress—not his physical suffering—that haunts him.

At the climax of the story, the narrator discovers he is not actually being buried alive after he suffers through his greatest fear. However, his terror is not based on a true event but on his distorted perception of an innocuous situation. In other words, his experience in the boat is anchored in a fictional narrative that he convinces himself is real. After his fear subsides and he realizes he is not being buried alive, he recognizes that his catalepsy is psychosomatic, a bodily condition created and made worse by stress and anxiety. In the end, the narrator concludes that the phobia caused the disorder, rather than the disorder causing the phobia.

In classic Gothic literary fashion, the story evinces that there are consequences to exploring the imagination, and one of them is the possibility of creating the experience of a living hell. In the end, however, Poe provides his own solution. The narrator reflects that the fears of the imagination are not entirely fanciful; they create real suffering, and they are conquered only by experiencing them. Otherwise, the consequence is death, either real or metaphorical.

In the latter case of a metaphorical death, fear creates an experience of life that is not congruent with the joyful conditions Poe describes at the end of the tale: going abroad, taking vigorous exercise, and breathing “the free air of Heaven” (Paragraph 45). In this sense, “The Premature Burial” becomes a cautionary tale about the dangers of exploring the imagination, due to its power. Imagination left unchecked can cause great suffering and even symptoms of physical disorder; it may prompt a haunting suffering that impairs one’s ability to live a free, fulfilling life. Ultimately, Poe warns that fear must be faced, or death and the terror of its impending arrival await.