THEME

What is the author's message in this story? 1.The author used this preexisting fear to tell a tale about not living life due to an all consuming fear about death. Discuss these themes in relation to this story: Give direct quotes from the story to point out each of these thems.
 * terror-He created a main character with a terrible disease that mimics death, and a phobia of being buried alive. During this time of history, there are believed to be untold numbers of people that were really buried alive, mistakenly judged to be dead by doctors,
 * isolation-Being cut off, being isolated from the world of the living, is in part the cause of the narrator's abnormal fear of being buried alive. The thought of being alone and abandoned, without hope of ever seeing another human being, petrifies the narrator. Ironically, to avoid the possibility of premature burial, he avoids leaving his home to be among people. "I hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home," he says.
 * "let the sleeping mind lie" (some things in the human mind are better left alone)- ....... At the end of the story, the narrator says the deep recesses of the human mind, where reside unknown and inscrutable terrors, are better left alone, unexplored. "The imagination of man is no Carathis," he says, "to explore with impunity its every cavern." The "demons" in the mind "must sleep, or they will devour us — they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish."



Illustrate each of these themes with images and/or videos.