Hi everybody ! It’s Halloween time and I really want to talk about a horror story after the name of my favourite writer Edgar Allan Poe.
It’s a short story went in 1835 in the newspaper Sourthen Literary Messenger and extract from Extraordinary Tales translate by Charles Baudelaire called Berenice.
Although I’ve already talk about one short story of this book, the plot is very dark and lugubrious and it is entirely appropriate for the atmosphere of Halloween.
Although I’ve already talk about one short story of this book, the plot is very dark and lugubrious and it is entirely appropriate for the atmosphere of Halloween.
In this story, the narrator named Egaeus mary his cousin Berenice. He suffers from a disease which he called monomania: it’s characterized by a sick obsession for objects or parts of a body. Berenice is also ill, she suffers from catalepsy ( she seems dead) and from epilepsy.
Egaeus being a strong consumer of opium, he tends to sink into delusions wich separate him from the reality. Time passes and Berenice’s health deteriorates in further by an unknown disease, her husband continues his excessive consumption of opium until seen his wife as an abstract and unreal being, he also develops an obsession for the teeths of Berenice.
Egaeus being a strong consumer of opium, he tends to sink into delusions wich separate him from the reality. Time passes and Berenice’s health deteriorates in further by an unknown disease, her husband continues his excessive consumption of opium until seen his wife as an abstract and unreal being, he also develops an obsession for the teeths of Berenice.
His wife succumbs and is burried on the same day, Egaeus still obsessed by the teeths of her.
One night a horrifying shout rings and Egaeus is wake up by one of his domestic. Berenice was found alive in the middle of her grave with her face full of blood. Egaeus gets up from his bed and discovers that he is covered with ground and blood. It’s an horrific vision for him, in the panic he brings down a small box and discovers, on the ground, 32 small pieces of white enamel.
One night a horrifying shout rings and Egaeus is wake up by one of his domestic. Berenice was found alive in the middle of her grave with her face full of blood. Egaeus gets up from his bed and discovers that he is covered with ground and blood. It’s an horrific vision for him, in the panic he brings down a small box and discovers, on the ground, 32 small pieces of white enamel.
I love this short story, the suspens is here from the begening to the end. We don’t understand why the obsession of Egaeus is so important until the end when t he discovers the horrible action he commited. At the time, people were horrified by the violence of the story and ask to remove it from the newspaper.
