2. Taphephobia: The Nightmarish Reality:
Poe presents taphephobia from different versions and different
characters. Each tale has a special story and a special experience, but all of
them share the presence of the grotesque elements and the sublime effect. Poe
uses the different elements of fiction to reflect the mass horror that pervaded
the public in the 19th C, using the premature burial as the radical living
example from the perspective of the victim and the doer of the internment. In
"The Fall of the House of Usher", Poe utilizes setting, characters and even
narration as catalysers to the presentation of the motif of taphephobia. He
chooses the setting to be isolated from the city, a decayed house in which its
"long, narrow and pointed" windows are "at so vast a distance" from the floor
that are " altogether inaccessible from within" (CTP 173), which
brings forth feelings of claustrophobia and entrapment that overwhelm the
taphephobic victim. Besides, Poe presents the protagonist Roderick Usher, from
the beginning of the tale, as the embodiment of death. He is introduced as a
young man who suffers, along with his sister, from a family curse, consisted of
a mysterious illness that drove him to be isolated from the outer life and to
bury himself and his sister in an old decayed house. Poe emphasizes the motif
by using the foreshadowing technique, through the character of Lady Madeline
who is presented as a ghost of a lost soul who appears and disappears
suddenly.
Layouni 59
This portrayal of Roderick Usher and his sister along with the
setting build the grounds for a general atmosphere of gloom and mystery and a
coming horror.
Furthermore, Poe chooses an intrusive narrator who narrates what
he sees from a subjective angle vision, describing in details the uncanny world
of Roderick Usher and reflecting his direct psychological pain and agony out of
his agitated conscience, knowing that Madeline was buried alive. The narrator
shows the general atmosphere of horror and madness, after Madeline's supposed
death, that overwhelms himself and his boyhood friend Roderick Usher. He
directly states that "overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror,
unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt
that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself
from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen [...]" (CTP 181).
The narrator presents a witness who is affected by the claustrophobic
atmosphere of the setting and by the horror of burying someone alive. The use
of the first person pronouns "I" and "we" helps the narrator to transmit the
horror beyond the limits of fiction, conveying the fact that his experience can
be shared with any American within the context of growing morbid fear of
premature burial.
In his attempt to study taphephobia as one of the remarkable
phenomena in the American society in 19th C, Poe tries to show the different
social components that fueled the public morbid fear, highlighting the role of
media (notably newspapers) and religion.
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