Edgar Allan Poe
The Premature Burial
Edgar Drinking Himself into "Hell"
Poe says, "There are moments when, even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the resemblance of a hell", when his wife Virginia had died he had felt as if he was living in "hell" and drank himself away until his death at the young age of 40. In "The Premature Burial" the narrator says that it is a hell when he thinks he is buried alive.
Is Poe Hiding Himself in his Writing??
Many people that were important to Edgar Allen had died, starting at the age of 2 in 1811 his mother Elizabeth died, in 1829 at the age of 20 his mother who adopted him, then in 1834 at the age 25 his father that adopted him and then in 1847 his wife Virginia dies when she is playing a blood vessel while playing piano and he was the last one to die at age 40. I think that he used his writings as a way to cope with the grief of loosing all of these important people in his life. All of his books, had something to do with death or just a very depressing story line one way or another.
Edgar's Wife Virginia and her deaths impact in his stories.
Virginia died while she was playing the piano and broke a blood vessel. Virginia also had tuberculosis. In another one of Poe's books, he added a character, Mr. Stapleton he had died from typus fever. I believe that he managed to bring the wife of his death into a story without it being so blatantly obvious.
The story "The Premature Burial" is about a journalist who is just like Poe as a person, a struggling writer trying to find a stable job, he little money, and will just find odd ended jobs to make a little money until they find another short term job.
Poe says, "To be buried alive, is beyond question the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot more mere mortality". I think he wrote this because it was a traumatic experience I can only imagine and I think he uses that as a type of comparison when he was going through the pain of losing all of his loved ones. With the deaths happening while he was so young as a child losing both mothers that had to have had some kind of impact on him, and I'm sure it was not a positive impact.