Berenice

“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.”

The narration uses a parallel structure in order to show how Egæus’s mind inverts what is considered normal. Reality and dreams are reversed for him, and he feels that he lives entirely within his own dreams and ideas. He spends most of his time in his house’s library, and this setting emphasizes how he is surrounded by fantasies and imaginary creations, rather than living in the real, outdoor world that Berenice prefers.

“It is more than probable that I am not understood—but I fear that it is indeed 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, as it were, buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most common objects of the universe.”

Egæus emphasizes the intensity of his mental health condition by claiming that it is impossible to describe its severity. This is a form of preterition, a literary device that presents an idea by pretending to gloss over it. He uses terms such as “nervous” and “powers of meditation” to portray his disorder as scientific in nature, rather than supernatural. This sentence also foreshadows a later plot development: Berenice’s premature burial. Using figurative language to describe his own mind as “buried” in contemplation, Egæus hints that his thoughts will be drawn down toward her grave.

“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.”

Egæus wants to distinguish his mental illness from common daydreaming, indicating that daydreamers who spend a long time contemplating a single object often do so because the object is significant, the thoughts are pleasurable, and they are imagining different scenarios. Because his obsession is attentive rather than speculative, Egæus can only fixate on a thing, rather than productively or enjoyably imagining it. This sentence indicates that he is not a true scholar or artist because his obsessions are limited to attention, not creation or research.

“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 fail to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass.”

Although his obsession causes him to commit an inhumane crime, Egæus is sometimes capable of morality and empathy for Berenice. This demonstrates that he is not a complete monster and that he recognizes he ought to feel saddened by Berenice’s suffering. Making Egæus a more relatable character may increase the story’s potential to frighten readers. The protagonist is compelled to perform a violent act due to an uncontrollable mental disease, indicating that it is possible to harm others against one’s own will.

“And now—now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I knew that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.”

This quote uses irony to subvert the positive associations of love and marriage. Traditional characteristics associated with falling in love—shuddering and growing pale—present very similarly to the emotion of fear. Egæus’s proposal is described as “an evil moment,” even though Berenice is willing to marry him. Their engagement is not a moment to be celebrated, but an occasion for greater horror.

“Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!”

Egæus regrets the moment when he first saw Berenice’s teeth and became fixated upon them. The story is written from his point of view and takes on the quality of a dramatic monologue. This exclamation emphasizes the narrative voice, making it seem as though Egæus were speaking aloud to the audience.

“The teeth!—the teeth!—they were here, and there, and every where, 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.”

The use of repetition and polysyndeton—the repetition of the conjunction “and,” in this case—creates a sense of amplifying urgency as Egæus falls deeper and deeper into his obsessive trance. The sensory details such as the image of pale lips “writhing” around long and narrow teeth demonstrate how upsetting and horrific this obsessive contemplation is for Egæus. Even though Berenice’s teeth are flawless and healthy, the extreme level of attention and detail caused by his obsession make them into a frightening image.

“Of Mad’selle Sallé it has been said, ‘que tous ses pas etoient [[etaient]] des sentiments,’ and of Berenice I more seriously believed que touts ses dents etaient des ideés.”

This allusion to the 18th-century French dancer Marie Sallé juxtaposes the meaningful motions of a dancer with the meaning Egæus finds in Berenice’s teeth. The first quote can be translated as “her every step was a sentiment,” implying that every motion the dancer made conveyed a feeling. Conversely, Egæus transforms this quote into his own version: “all her teeth were ideas.”

“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 and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber.”

The long chain of clauses shows that Egæus is aware that time is passing only through the rising and setting of the sun. The use of many short phrases separated by conjunctions creates a rhythm that underscores how incredibly long Egæus sits and thinks about the teeth. During this time, he never moves or leaves the room but imagines the teeth changing as the rising and the setting of the sun alter the light in the library.

“Is it my brain that reels—or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that stirred in the white cerement that bound it?”

The use of a rhetorical question creates ambiguity: Was Egæus aware that Berenice was about to be buried alive, or did his own state of mental distress prevent him from realizing that she was still able to move. The idea of the white cerement—a cloth used to wrap a body for burial—binding Berenice’s finger suggests that she is being forcibly restrained. Her premature burial, therefore, seems less like an unfortunate accident and more like a violation of her bodily autonomy. This sentence and the paragraphs around it were removed from later versions of the story.

“It was a fearful page in the record of 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.”

The metaphor of a written book page is used to represent Egæus’s memory. The idea of a written record usually means that information can be reliably recalled, but here the writing is “dim” and “unintelligible.” The fact that Egæus cannot “decypher” this writing indicates that his memories are not accessible to him, as though they were written in code. When he attempts to understand the record of his own memories, he instead recalls the sound of a woman screaming, foreshadowing that he was the one who extracted Berenice’s teeth.

“Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicæ visit arem [[visitarem]] curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.”

This quote appears in an open book that sits beside Egæus when he awakens from his trance. The story provides a translation in the footnote: “My companions told me I might find some little alleviation of my misery, in visiting the grave of my beloved.” This literary allusion is used ironically to indicate how Egæus misinterpreted the poem. He took the advice literally, going to Berenice’s grave and digging her up, while the poem suggests that the act of mourning and remembrance can bring comfort for the bereaved.

“He told of a wild cry heard in 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 discovered upon its margin—a body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!”

The use of anaphora—the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of multiple lines or clauses—in these short phrases builds suspense that culminates in a climactic revelation. The repetition of “still” draws attention to the shocking nature of the discovery that Berenice was buried alive. Three synonyms connect the notion of motion to the state of being alive. If Berenice’s body is breathing and palpitating, it must be living. The description of the body as “disfigured” sets up the final twist of the story—that Berenice’s teeth were removed—although Egæus does not yet realize what he did.