The Evidence of Some Bitter Struggle - Essay Example

Poe then allows the reader to imagine what the rest of the "evidence" is on "her emaciated frame". It is as if the reader is seeing her for the first time along with the characters. She is just a "frame" rather than a body, seeming more dead than alive and more terrible in her aspect because of it. The use of the verbs "trembling" and "reeling" evokes the physicality of her precarious predicament, again making the reader actually see the woman with his/her mind's eye as they are reading.

The sentence structure here copies the moment of suspense that the characters are going through. The ", then," reflects the uncertainty as to what is about to happen for the narrator. Will she fall outwards or inwards or will she stay trembling, caught between the two The rest of the sentence answers this question. A first-year English student might be accused of writing a "run-on" sentence if she handed this in, proving that the 'rules of grammar are in fact merely conventions that can and should be broken when needed.

As the woman is in her final "death-agonies" it is her brother who is taken "to the floor a corpse". Poe brilliantly evokes the terror and suddenness with which the brother dies. He dies standing on his feet and thus his progress to the ground is natural. One moment he is alive, the next he is a corpse. He has not been "killed", nor has he really "died" in an active sense. He has merely, and instantly become a corpse. The brother has apparently died of fright rather than being physically injured.

Poe, tortured as he was by madness, alcoholism, and various fears surrounding death, shows how raw terror may actually kill a person. The idea of someone being scared to death might seem vaguely humorous or childish in other hands, but with Poe's evocative skill it is a terrifying description. He captures the fear and terror of death that many people feel like adults, but which they are loath to admit to.