Edgar Allan Poe shows a fascination with death, disease, and decay in his stories and poems, and he uses symbolism to represent death and dying as something that takes place not separate from life but deeply embedded within it. Poe mixes life and death in a variety of ways, so much so that he seems to show a morbid fascination with the processes of dying and with the symbolism of death.
Poe's preoccupation with death and more specifically with death-in-life is seen in many of his short stories. The character of Roderick Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a man whose senses are so acute as to cause him physical pain -- a case of one who lives life is in an ultra mode that restricts his movements so much as to reduce rather than enhance life. His sister shows a different form of life-in-death, or death-in-life -- the two seem interchangeable in Poe's writings. She is subject to a malady whereby she appears to be dead but is not, and she is placed in her tomb prematurely. This theme was used by Poe elsewhere, as in the story "The Premature Burial" in which the protagonist fears being buried alive and ultimately is.
A different sort of life-in-death element is shown in "The Cask of Amontillado," a story that features a theme repeated in several Poe stories, that of being buried alive, this time with the victim walled up by his enemy and left to die. Living death behind a wall is seen as well in a different form in "The Black Cat," where the criminal is undone when a cat is walled up with his victim. Being buried alive is a theme repeated again and again in Poe, recalling his own sense of living death in his life and his fear of being entombed.
However, as can be seen in the way Poe handles certain symbolic elements, living death is the way Poe defines life itself, for he sees us as always on the road to death every day of our lives. His story "The Masque of the Red Death" presents a kingdom overcome by a terr...