Outright death brings with it a kind of finality and release from the mortal world: burial alive, in contrast, condemns one to a kind of liminal space between the realms of the living and the dead. The plot of “The Black Cat” puts a nice spin on the narrative device, but the concept of being buried alive also appears in “The Cask of Amontillado,” “Morella,” “Eleanora,” “Ligeia,” and “Berenice.” The premature burial of Roderick Usher’s sister drives the entire narrative of Poe’s story about the fall of that house further, as if the appearance of this running motif were not obvious enough, there is the story that Poe titled “The Premature Burial.” Beyond the literal fear of this kind of death, premature burial takes on a symbolic meaning as the fear of being trapped in a kind of existential limbo.
As a result, stories of premature burial abound throughout literature and throughout Poe’s stories.
Prior to the technological revolution in medicine and advancements in the art of embalming, the fear of being buried alive due to being misconstrued as dead was very real.
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