The Premature Burial

Bathos is a literary device that involves a sudden shift in tone from serious or elevated to trivial or absurd. It is often used to create a humorous or ironic effect, but it can also be used to criticize or mock something by making it seem less important than it is. The use of bathos in “The Premature Burial” makes it unclear whether Poe is writing based on his own fear of death and premature burial or mocking the historical moral panic surrounding this phenomenon.

The climax of the story provides a prominent example of bathos: The narrator cries out, believing he is buried alive, but the men on the boat respond in a humorous manner that deflates the drama and creates an anticlimactic effect.

At the very end of the story, Poe uses a moral epiphonema, a summary statement. The story’s summary consists of an exhortation about Conquering Fear or Else Succumbing to It and continuing to endure torment. These effects may literally be deadly, or, as in the story, they may lead to a state of mind wherein one no longer leads a fulfilling life.

An epiphonema is typically used to conclude an argument, and reading Poe’s story from that perspective suggests that the text is an argument regarding the potentially dangerous power of the imagination to fuel a degree of terror that may control one’s life. Poe concludes that even the “sober eye of Reason” cannot stop the consequences of exploring the imagination too deeply, of unearthing terrors that are capable of devouring the self and creating “the semblance of a Hell” on Earth (Paragraph 46).