Insanity In Berenice By Edgar Allan Poe

In Berenice by Edgar Allen Poe, Egaeus, who’s preparing to marry Berenice, becomes obsessed with her teeth, causing him to extract her teeth while she’s unconscious. Through the unconsciousness of Egaeus, Poe reveals the consequences of obsession and repression. Poe conveys the dangers of repressing the sub-conscience through subtle foreshadowing and characterization. Edgar Allen Poe has always composed gothic literature involving the protagonist's perspective. Using first-person narration, he subtly reveals the insanity the characters exhibit, like in Egaeus’s experience. Due to Poe’s famous works, psychiatrists and psychologists have used it “to examine the hidden, darker elements of the human brain,” (Mccoppin 43) allowing many to analyze

Poe’s parents died only a few years after his birth, sending him to his foster family. During adulthood, both his fiancee and his foster mother died, causing him to gain an alcohol addiction and become severely depressed. Through this adversity, he found an outlet in writing about death and the supernatural, leading to his career in gothic literature.
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Likewise, Egaeus goes through many similar adversities as Poe. Egaeus lives an
“isolated” life due to his disease and the loss of his mother, causing him to lose his sense of beauty early in life. Poe implemented this detail to foreshadow his early signs of repression but also as a reflection of Poe’s loss and his depression. After all, a psychological problem following the loss of a parental figure is a well-known concept in many of Poe’s works. Both Egaeus and
Poe’s early trauma led to their dark and depressive personalities, revealing that Poe does use his internalized struggles “to transform that into a thrilling horror story and create an incredibly intricate character” (Quick 7). Another trait Eagaeus and Poe share is their detachment from reality. Eagaeus described his youth as “dissipated.. in reverie,” often analyzing

Due to Eagaeus's mother’s death, he was unable to mature properly and formed sexual desires. Psychosexual development is defined as “two stages: the first when the child is with the mother and the second when the child is separated from the mother” (KOHNO 40). Since
Eagaeus was never properly separated from his mother, he transferred this desire toward the
“chamber.” He associates his childhood “with that chamber” where his mother died. Her death starts his distortion, described as “realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only.” By using this defense mechanism, he “invents” a world that separates himself and reality
(Mcoppin 53). He describes his childhood as living “as if he were perpetually in dreams after the death of his mother” and continues this characteristic throughout his adulthood (Mccoppin 53).
He then describes his childhood, mainly about Berenice and her beauty. To him, Berenice was never “as a thing to admire, but to analyze,” revealing that he continues to distance himself even
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