This story especially reminds me of the book review by Margaret Alterton. This story was written during the time that people were reading “medical jurisprudence” and learning of new advances as well as strange occurrences in medicine. Death was becoming big business. As stated by ABC, embalming was becoming widely accepted and the need to “send a loved one off well” was becoming a fashion statement as well as religious one.
According to Alterton, there were many instances in the journal citing stories about people being buried alive. It was this phenomenon, that doctors were inspired to dig up graves for experimentation and a chance to find someone buried alive. It also led to numerous murders where people were buried alive and then dug up to prove that this “medical marvel” really occurred.
It is amazing that the narrator was completely consumed with death and being buried alive, that he took precautions to ensure against it. Yet it was only after sleeping in such a condition as to cause him to believe that he had been buried alive did he realize that he had a life to live and he then began to do so. Was Poe speaking out against those who were so consumed with death that they could not enjoy the life they had?
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