Edgar Allen Poe Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Edgar Allen Poe - Essay Example This relationship between the brother and sister is further examined in terms of the dominant sibling holding sway over the weaker brother. The night of the storm, Roderick is seen in the narrator’s room. â€Å"His head had dropped upon his breast †¦ he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway† while he seems aware that Madeline, buried alive in the crypt below, has been struggling for many days to escape her tomb. â€Å"Long – long – long – many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it – yet I dared not – oh, pity me, miserable wretch, that I am! – I dared not – I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!†. While Roderick is incapable of facing his ghastly mistake in order to rectify it, Madeline appears in the doorway with â€Å"blood upon her white robes and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame†. The terror of her appearance is made all the more ghastly as one considers how the two men struggled over the casements that had enclosed her body, the heavy iron door that had blocked her tomb and the completely sealed quality of the dungeon in which she was placed. More than requiring superhuman strength to overcome the several days’ worth of airlessness that she had endured since being buried, Madeline required additional superhuman strength to throw off the heavy, bolted lid of her coffin and tear open the locked door of her cell in order to appear in the narrator’s room that evening. â€Å"Mistakenly we ask these creatures, ‘What do you want?’