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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The motif of sleep is present in a literal sense and a figurative sense throughout the story, feeding into the Liminality of Death and helping the reader to explore the concept of the body versus the mind. The practice of mesmerism aims to put its subject into a trance, or a sleep-like state, and the Narrator achieves this with Valdemar, causing him to slumber undisturbed for seven months. Much of the story’s tension derives from the Narrator’s attempts to discern if, and when, Valdemar enters into the mesmeric trance, and, once he is satisfied that his experiment has indeed been successful, to discern whether Valdemar is still alive (and only sleeping), or dead.
Sleep is a sort of hazy midway point between a more active, living status, and totally passive death; Valdemar’s hovering in a state of strange sleep or trance makes his condition always mysterious, a source of intrigue exploited by Poe. The Narrator constantly asks Valdemar if he is “sleeping,” and readers are left in anticipation as to if and when he will awaken. Notably, Valdemar is also stretched out on his bed during almost the entirety of the story, his personal bed becoming his literal death bed by its end.
By Edgar Allan Poe
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Berenice
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Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
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Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
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The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
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The Fall of the House of Usher
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The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
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The Imp of the Perverse
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The Lake
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The Man of the Crowd
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The Masque of the Red Death
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The Murders in the Rue Morgue
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The Oval Portrait
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The Philosophy of Composition
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