Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Premature Burial" tells of a man who develops an obsession with being buried alive due to his fear of premature internment. He recounts several historical instances of people who were accidentally buried alive. The story culminates with the narrator experiencing an attack of catalepsy from which he awakens in a confined dark space, though it turns out to be the berth of a boat rather than a grave. The theme explores the terror of being buried alive and becoming isolated from the living.

1. University of El Salvador
Western Multidisciplinary Campus
Literature II
The Premature Burial by: Edgar
Allan Poe
Katherinne Hernandez
Carmen Lima

2. 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.

4. Characters
Setting
Plot
Point of view
Theme

5. 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

6. Setting
Story Setting
1 Baltimore
2 1810 France
3
4 1831 London
5 Richmond Virginia

7. 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

8. 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

9. Rising action
The Narrator mentions
several people who have
been buried alive.

10. Climax
Attacks of catalepsy and the
narrator awakens in pitch
darkness in a confined area.
He cries out but is
immediately hushed.

11. Falling action
He realizes he's in the berth
of a boat, not a grave.

12. Resolution
The event snaps him out of
his obsession with death

13. Point of view
3r prson that turns into a 1st person
narration

14. 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.

15.  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.

16.  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.