Your Daily Poe (Or Edgar Allan If You're Nasty)

As it's officially October (BOO!), I will on every day be reading one short story written by the Master of the Macabre himself, and briefly commenting on it. Enjoy!

Day 8: Berenice

Thoughts: The ending - the final two paragraphs - is interesting in that it brings a lot of Poe's tropes together (female obsession and death, people buried alive, gripping trances) and may stand as a warning against our worst impulses when not in control of ourselves. But everything leading up to it sounds like any whiny teenager screeching about the love of his life, to the point you're not really upset when tragedy happens and roll your eyes the next time he starts up another "We're together forever!" mix tape.

Memorable Line: The intro paragraph is pretty gripping: "MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? --from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been."

Score from 1 - 10: 4