Many of the characters and plots in Poe's short stories
involve psychologically disturbed people. This story is a good example, and perhaps the
most violent of them all. Its protagonist, Egaeus, is a deeply disturbed individual, a
monomaniac, a type of mental/personality disorder which Poe was fond of employing in
many of his tales of gothic fiction.
Egaeus is supposed to
marry his cousin, Berenice, even though she is physically ill and frail. He is mentally
ill. He fixates on objects and exhibits other characteristics of a mentally ill person
such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, trance-like behavior that he does not seem able
to control, bouts of depression and euphoria typical of manic depression, etc. One of
the things he fixates upon in this story is Berenice's teeth. After Berenice supposedly
dies and is buried, in one of his disassociative states, Egaeus somehow digs up her
grave and extracts all 32 of her teeth with dental instruments. The reader never sees
this happen, but from Poe's description of what happens, the reader infers that Egaeus
has pulled out Berenice's teeth without realizing she was buried alive. His clothing is
covered with mud and blood and these images lead the reader to infer what
happened.
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