Edgar Allen Poe: Berenice

Summary

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead What a scary read. Egaeus, the narrator, talks about his relationship to his cousin Berenice. He lives the life of a scholar, prefers the night and is quite sickly. Berenice is the counterpart until she fall ill an decays day by day. There are plans of marriage. Egaeus is obsessed by her teeth. When the day of her interment is over a shadowy shrouded figure is reported. What about the teeth? A very morbid story, full of decay, visions of grey and unsound living in the dark. Frightening and recommended!

Berenice" is a short horror story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835. The story is narrated by Egaeus, who is preparing to marry his cousin Berenice. He tends to fall into periods of intense focus, during which he seems to separate himself from the outside world. Berenice begins to deteriorate from an unnamed disease until only her teeth remain healthy. Egaeus obsesses over them. When Berenice is buried, he continues to contemplate her teeth. One day, he awakens with an uneasy feeling from a trance-like state and hears screams. A servant reports that Berenice's grave has been disturbed, and she is still alive. Beside Egaeus is a shovel, a poem about "visiting the grave of my beloved", and a box containing 32 teeth.

Contemporary readers were horrified by the story's violence and complained to the editor of the Messenger. Although Poe later published a self-censored version of the work, he believed the story should be judged solely by how many copies it sold.