Tynan Portillo presents, featuring the works of Edgar Allan Poe and the best horror stories from the 19th century. Welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Music and narration by Tynan Portillo.
        Today’s episode, Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe.


My companions said to me, if I would visit the grave of my beloved, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.
                                                                     --Ebn Zaiat.

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.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars --in the character of the family mansion --in the frescos of the chief saloon --in the tapestries of the dormitories --in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory --but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings --in the fashion of the library chamber --and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes --of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before --that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? --let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms --of spiritual and meaning eyes --of sounds, musical yet sad --a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land --into a palace of imagination --into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition --it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye --that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers --it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life --wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, --not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew --I ill of health, and buried in gloom --she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side --mine the studies of the cloister --I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation --she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! --I call upon her name --Berenice! --and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! --Oh! Naiad among its fountains! --and then --then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease --a fatal disease --fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim --where was she, I knew her not --or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself --trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease --for I have been told that I should call it by no other appelation --my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form --hourly and momently gaining vigor --and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; --such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. --The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio "de Amplitudine Beati Regni dei"; St. Austin's great work, the "City of God"; and Tertullian "de Carne Christi," in which the paradoxical sentence "Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est" occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -- in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning --among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday --and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her -- not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream -- not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze --not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now --now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, --one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon*, --I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination --or the misty influence of the atmosphere --or the uncertain twilight of the chamber --or the gray draperies which fell around her figure --that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, I --not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface --not a shade on their enamel --not an indenture in their edges --but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! --the teeth! --they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They --they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, "que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! --ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees! --ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went --and the day again dawned --and the mists of a second night were now gathering around --and still I sat motionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was --no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive --at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror --horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed --what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, "what was it?"
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, "Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas." Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? --some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night --of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; --and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave --of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to garments;-they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; --it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; --I looked at it for some minutes; --it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

        Welcome back to The Poe Show, I’m your host Tynan Portillo. Thank you for listening to this episode and if you liked what you heard or saw, as I am doing video episodes on YouTube now, then follow or subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more and be sure to give it a like and share it with others. If you’re in need of a voice actor or narrator you can contact me at poeshowpod@gmaill.com with your project details. And remember to send any and all questions you have for me using the Send a Message link to send an anonymous text message to the podcast. Or comment on YouTube!
        Boy, this story was not what I expected!
        I know that Edgar Allan Poe comes from an era that plays a lot more with intelligent jargon. I have always understood the writing style of the time and of Edgar Allan Poe, and I’ve never had a problem with it. But this main character was just so…pompous! So holier than thou! He was insufferable!
        I talked about this a bit on TikTok, but I’ll reiterate it here: Egaeus, who tells this story, writes in such intolerably long sentences that go on and on, and he takes forever to get to his point. I also got a comment on TikTok from an English teacher who makes potions - one of the weirdest combinations I’ve heard of, but cool - who misinterpreted my video.
        My whole complaint for this story is that Egaeus, who has grown up in a library all of his life, pouring over the words of philosophers and writers from the ages, and who has spent most of his time alone, uses language that is intentionally complicated in order to sound sophisticated. In reality, he’s complicating the story in a way that makes it hard for me to want to keep reading. Which is honestly a great talent of Edgar Allan Poe to write something so out of his own character.
        But the commenter on TikTok said, “If you don’t understand the time, you won’t get it.”
        Not gonna lie, that pissed me off.
        I’m not just an Edgar Allan Poe fan, alright? I’m not some kid who thinks Gothic horror is nice. I study this shit. I want to be an expert on it. My complaint is about the character of the story. That’s it. That has nothing to do with the time in which this story was written or my comprehension of it.
        I know how authors were paid during the Victorian era. I know the Romanticism that Edgar Allan Poe seeped into every part of his work. I understand poetic symbolism and how to analyze literature more than the average person. I have made sure that my media literacy is on point. And although I have not gone to college, I was a straight A student in Honors and AP classes, with 2 consecutive years of AP English in high school, an AP Seminar course, and on each AP test I scored a 5 - the highest they set it. The only reason I state this is because they claim to know what they’re talking about because they have a degree in American Literature, which is great! But you’re not the only authority on this information just because you have that degree. You were the one who didn’t understand my premise.
        The commenter went on to say I should look up vagina dentata - do me a favor, don’t look that up. It’s about teeth in the vagina. It’s a piece of folklore that has pervaded some cultures as a representation of women’s sexual repression and men’s fear of women’s sexuality. If you’re asking yourself, “Why are we talking about this?” I asked myself the same question!
        The commenter went on to say that this story was an expression from Edgar Allan Poe of Egaeus’s hidden desires for Berenice and his fear of Berenice’s sexuality. They apparently wrote a paper on it in college.
        Now, I have not been to college. I don’t have the complete scope of American literature that this person does. So I say “Thanks for sharing! I disagree because that’s not how Edgar Allan Poe wrote about women in any of his other works.” I specified that I disagree because I know that art is subjective, and just because I don’t see something you see in a work of literature doesn’t discredit it. If you walk away from the Hunger Games thinking that a hidden theme was that the world is gonna turn Orange, then good on you. I don’t see it that way, but it’s subjective.
But they responded, “He didn’t write it until he did.”
        Oh. So you want to argue, do you? Prove your point. Provide evidence.
        Nothing in this story is explicitly or metaphorically implying sex in any manner. Perhaps it can be argued that Egaeus has a fetish with Berenice’s teeth, but that is a part of his monomania - the trance of singular obsession he goes into - which he reuses in his stories time and again. That is not even implied in having to do with sex.


Even teeth themselves are used as a symbol of mortality and the grotesqueness of death. Metzengerstein, Hop Frog, and many other stories use teeth in this way.
Unless you force the idea of vagina dentata into the narrative where it wasn’t before. There is no textual evidence that supports Berenice being sexually repressed either, in fact she is shown to be the freer of the two characters, because Egaeus is always cooped up in the library due to personal illness. Berenice frolicks outside all the time, living an adventurous life.
        If you were to argue that during Edgar Allan Poe’s lifetime, because this story was published right before he got married to his cousin Virginia, it could be a personal feeling of Poe’s before getting married. That kind of fits, but again, you have to provide evidence that is supported by the text or other texts surrounding the work.
        For instance, I thought that The Cask of Amontillado was about two best friends, since it’s heavily based on Edgar Allan Poe’s soured relationship with Thomas English. But I could be wrong, because nothing in the story implies that they are real friends! I had other comments on TikTok saying this exact thing.
        I found an article talking about how this story could represent how repressing our natural desires can lead to unnatural thoughts and acts of violence - which is true! But where’s the sex?
        Never expected that question to come out of my mouth.
        Egaeus refers to Berenice as a sylph, an immortal spirit of the air. He says she has, yes, gorgeous beauty, but fantastic beauty. She’s also called a Naiad, or a nymph - incredibly beautiful spirits of nature. She, like many other women in Poe’s writings, is being compared to that of a goddess.
        Well, what about the passage that says, “the noon of my manhood found me still in the mansions of my fathers’...” Noon of manhood, sounds like passing puberty, getting to a height of desire. But keep reading! He is talking specifically about the adventure of youth being repressed in the mansions of his fathers. He’s not leaving the library!
        His thoughts inverted, he perceived his dreams as reality and vice versa. He started going insane due to never leaving this library and living real life. It’s about isolation and loneliness. This story is Taxi Driver turned up to a literary 11!
        It’s ironic, really, how all over social media you have people saying that the men who get engulfed in the world of self help and only focus on themselves end up being miserable and selfish, while those who engage in the world with empathy turn out to be better human beings, and this story is expressing that same idea! Poe is literally showing that Egaeus is going mad by being alone, living within his own heart and doing nothing but being introspective.
        And ask yourself, “Would Edgar Allan Poe be more likely to write about a man going mad from loneliness or a man going mad from not having sex?”
        Like I said, this story, as with all art, is up for interpretation. But if you’re going to interpret it, and grandstand on your claim, don’t disregard the need for textual evidence. That’s like saying, “The meek shall inherit the Earth,” means that you should be a monster who can, but doesn’t, hurt people. That interpretation, while an interesting point of view, is not supported by the text, the proper translation nor the context in which that scripture resides.
        All of that being said, I asked that person to provide a video explaining their claim because I am willing to learn. And I understand that art is subjective. But they never responded.
        Anyway, moving on.
This story was a maze of words and once which you cannot barrel through to get to the end. It’s the type of story where each sentence is like a complete book in itself, with depth and detail that you have to pay attention to. And again, I’m going to give credit to Edgar Allan Poe for crafting a story that seems so totally out of his writing style and usual habits.
He seemed to be experimenting with a little bit more of his wit in this story, and really showing off his intelligence. Which makes sense because at this point in his life he was gaining more success and had some more confidence. And he was making a living, not a good one, but a living, on his own published writings. I actually talked about that on TikTok as well. You guys should really join TikTok - like, follow me on TikTok because I do a lot of videos there. And I post them to YouTube Shorts as well!
But Edgar Allan Poe was essentially his generation’s Hubslife. He had a 9-5 and he made a living and it paid his bills - he was usually an editor for different newspapers or magazines, and he tried to get a government job underneath Andrew Jackson. But then, he stared getting a little bit of notoriety for his own writings. And he wanted to make a living off of just his own work. Now this was really like he won a contest and he won a little bit of money. And he gained a small fanbase who kind of knew who he was, but overall he was not the legend that he is today and he was not seen as the literary genius of his time that we have today.
And his story has a much worse ending than I hope is in store for Hubslife. Of course, I wish him the best and good luck. It can just be difficult when you establish a fanbase in one thing and then you divert to doing your whole brad as another thing…it’s gonna be hard to keep your fanbase that way.
This is definitely my least favorite Edgar Allan Poe story of all time. Most hated as well. It’s just…it just feels like a bog. And wha’ts interesting too is - I have here Farenheit 451. I’m a huge fan of Ray Bradbury, and if you’ve never given him a read, I mean honestly, I would probably encourage you - I’ve got both of these books here, this is funny. I would encourage you to read Something Wicked This Way Comes. That is probably your best bet for your first Ray Bradbury story, you want to read Something Wicked This Way Comes. And then probably go on to Farenheit 451.
But Something Wicked This Way Comes deals with more of the magical and superanturalness that Ray Bradbury liked to include in his stories. And it’s a very good story, but if you don’t like this work then you probably won’t like Ray Bradbury in general, is my thought. You might like I Am The Cheese by Ray Bradbury. Honestly that is my favorite book other than Farenheit 451. So, definitely would reccommend. But the thing with Ray Bradbury, and the reason why I mention him, is because the way he writes, to me, feels like you’re swimming. You’re swimming and you see an island in the distance. It’s this ray of hope, it’s this idea that you’re traveling towards. But you have to keep on fighting these waves and you get tossed and turned, and it’s difficult to get through but you can get there. You just have to keep moving.
And I like that about Ray Bradbury’s stories. It feels like a dream when I read it. But with this story, it felt like a bog. It felt like each step I was taking was just sunk me deeper and deeper and I wasn’t getting any further. I was just getting deeper into this bog. I wasn’t actually making any progress in understanding where I was going. Also if you’re a fan of Ray Bradbury, I hope you know of and are enjoying The Ray Bradbury Theater which is featured on Amazon Prime. That is a TV show where all of the episodes were different short stories written by Ray Bradbury, specifically written for television. I’ve been enjoying it. You can find a few episoes for free on YouTube, so, you know, if you don’t have a subscription, you can check one out there. But really really good ideas, really good stories!
As far as film goes, I wouldn’t say that they’re 100%. There was one episode that I watched that was so interesting. It had Jeff Goldblum in it. And it’s such an interesting story, but as far as the filming of it was done, it just wasn’t executed very properly. It left me feeling like it was kinda empty and they didn’t plan ahead for a lot of the shots. But that’s just my opinion on how it went as far as a film medium. But Jeff Goldblum is great - the actors are actually all really good. And the story and idea is so captivating! I just felt like it was lacking by putting it into a film context.
Which is a common complaint that many people have online of the Ray Bradbury Theater. Because Ray Bradbury - ooh, that’s upside down. Not that you can see that if you’re not watching, but, you know, watch on YouTube. But the thing about Ray Bradbury is that you have to read it to understand it, in my opinion. Because you could have sentences like - 
Let’s just pick one right here.
“They walked home quietly on the moon colored sidewalks, Mr. Halloway between the boys.”
That is such a beautiful brush stroke, it’s such a nice image presented in a way that I’ve never heard before. Moon colored sidewalks. It so simply creates just a unique picture that I’ve never heard or seen before. But in film, that translates to people walking down the street. So it’s just hard to make that as interesting as Ray Bradbury does when he sits down to write a novel.
I was surprised too to learn that Berenice had been buried alive. I did not think that there was more than one story in which Edgar Allan Poe had someone buried alive, such as in The Premature Burial. However, I was also disappointed with that one because in The Premature Burial I was expecting something like a Kill Bill moment. Where someone, you know, breaks through the lid of the coffin and then has to dig themselves up out of the grave. I was excited to read something like that in Edgar Allan Poe’s style. Didn’t happen that way, wasn’t about that. He just told a bunch of different stories about people being buried alive and then his own where he had the fear of buried alive, but it didn’t happen.
I said that like Poe wrote that about himself. He didn’t, I meant the character.
But this story was quite interesting. It had an interesting character, it had a very interesting set of circumstances for the character to be in (very interesting personal illness and personal obstacle for the main character). A very evil action without the intention of evil. Which is, you know, usually with Edgar Allan Poe the main characters are the evil ones and they are - they do have some kind of a nefarious goal. So it was interesting to see that “Oh, man can do evil when he is not in control.” Which is kind of like, you know, when someone goes mad, when they go insane, it’s kind of like they lose control of their mind. But here we have a man who did not go mad, but he went into a trance where he - he didn’t glorify the love of violence. But he did have an obsession with Berenice’s teeth and ripped them out of her mouth while she still lived.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for this story now so thank you so much for listening or for watching on YouTube obviously. And thank you for subscribing, liking and sharing with others. And if you’re an author who would like to feature your own story on the podcast then email poeshowpod@gmail.com or if you need an actor or a voice actor or narrator for a project then you can email me there. You can leave any questions with the “Send a message” link in the description of this episode or leave them on YouTube or on TikTok or on Instagram. Follow me all of those places, links in the description of this episode.
But that’s all for now. So thank you so much for listening and for watching. And you’ll see me in the next one on The Poe Show.