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Edgar Allan PoeThe Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1845A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Liminality of Death
In “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” the title character is in a liminal state for seven months. The mesmeric trance the Narrator has put him into keeps him suspended between life and death (and between sleeping and waking). That Valdemar is in a place to which the living do not have access, and which is therefore difficult to imagine and impossible to verify, makes his condition a central mystery as well as a vehicle for suspense. It invites numerous questions—not just whether Valdemar is alive, dead, or something else, but also whether Valdemar himself is truly speaking in the unearthly voice, and, if so, what this says about the relationship between the mind and body. For the most part, however, Valdemar’s liminal state remains opaque; even he himself is uncertain of his condition in the moments following his apparent death, answering first “Yes” and then “No” when the narrator asks him if he is sleeping.
Emphasizing the strange and exceptional liminal state of Valdemar is a way for Poe to consider the more realistic and relatable question of death as a transition or transformation. The story immediately establishes that Valdemar is dying and that it is his “custom […] to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted” (97). Valdemar, surrounded by doctors and subject to regular checkups, is aware that he will soon die and has accepted this fact. Even before being mesmerized, he is already in a liminal state—alive, but not in the same way as one who has no sense of their impending demise.
However, if the story implies the existence of a spirit independent of the body, it primarily concerns death as a physical phenomenon. The narrative is full of imagery of decay and (more broadly) of matter in states of transition. The clearest example is of course the rapid disintegration of Valdemar’s body at the story’s conclusion, but the narrator’s description of the “ossification” of Valdemar’s lungs also resonates. The term positions Valdemar’s body in a state of flux similar to decomposition, though here the movement is toward greater solidity. It also recalls the transformation of a corpse into a skeleton.
Although the story reveals little about Valdemar’s mental or spiritual state during his seven months of suspended animation, its implication seems to be that his mind or soul has been unnaturally yoked to the decomposition process: His voice after his physical death is “gelatinous” (anticipating his body’s liquefication) and seems to emanate from “within the earth” (101), as if buried like a body. What is clear are his feelings about his condition. He is trapped, he is in agony, and he ultimately begs the narrator to either put him to sleep or let him die. The liminal state Poe explores in this story functions as the paradigmatic “fate worse than death” and recasts Valdemar’s demise as comparably natural, perhaps even a source of salvation.
Fact and Objectivity
As is evident from the title, the story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is concerned with factuality. The Narrator, keen to have us believe the incredible story he is recounting, makes clear from the beginning and at various points throughout the story that, while he is aware of how unbelievable it might sound, it is nevertheless true. In doing so, he alludes to various “discussion[s] in private circles” and “a garbled or exaggerated account [that] made its way into society,” leading to “many unpleasant misrepresentations” (96). By contrasting his version with these others—dismissed as hyperbole and gossip—the Narrator seeks to establish himself as an authority and his version as the definitive one. To bolster these claims, he describes his story as an objective account, stating that his aim is simply to “give the facts” (96) that every unbelievable event took place in the company of some other credible witness, and that much of his story is even taken verbatim from the notes of Mr. L—l, made on the spot as the events were transpiring. Nevertheless, we know that this is a work of fiction, and that the most noteworthy events of the story—namely, the Narrator’s ability to arrest Valdemar’s death, accompanied by the speaking of an unearthly, supernatural voice and followed by the disgusting, unnatural decomposition of his body—are impossible in the real world.
Poe thereby creates a tension between the seemingly scientific elements of his story, rendered in precise medical terminology with authority and an insistence on their validity, and the shocking supernatural turns of events. The reader is constantly torn, then, between these two poles, between the desire to believe the “facts” presented, and skepticism. This is complicated by our knowledge that scientific experiments can and do reveal new truths about nature and biology, and can therefore truly reshape our conception of reality.
Communication and Communicability
If the Narrator strives to convey a sense of objectivity in this story, he does so through his use of language, presenting his words as facts, his vivid descriptions as illustrative aids rather than manipulative storytelling embellishments. This is just one manifestation of Poe’s broader thematic interest in questions of communication. If this short story has at its center a mystery, it hinges on the question of why and how Valdemar manages to speak through his mesmeric trance and from the great beyond, as well as the fundamental problem that Valdemar cannot really communicate what is happening to him. The words he speaks convey that he is trapped in a liminal, sleeping state between life and death, but he never spells out exactly where he is, or what this state is truly like. The readers (along with the characters) are left to infer the haziest, most intriguing aspects of his strange condition. This is also the main way in which the supernatural enters the text; while this is not a ghost or vampire story in a traditional sense, the fact that Valdemar can be compelled to speak through his trance even after he has died aligns this text with these other more overtly fantastic types of narratives because, like them, it grants a certain agency to the body and mind after death, which is a physical impossibility in reality. As in ghost stories, Poe creates a story in which a dead man is able to speak to the living.
On the other hand, while Poe’s use of dialogue gives us some sense of Valdemar’s experience, it does so only in the broadest strokes. His final words (“For God’s sake!—quick!—quick!—put me to sleep—or, quick!—waken me!— quick!—I say to you that I am dead!” and “ejaculations of ‘dead! dead!’ [103]) finally confirms that he has indeed died during the trance, but some trace of consciousness must remain in his deceased body to make these claims. The exclamations and urgency of his speech suggest that he is in pain, troubled, or unsettled and convey a deeply-felt desire to be finally at rest rather than suspended between states. Poe also makes Valdemar’s form of communication from beyond the grave notably grotesque, describing his “distended” mouth and “blackened” and “swollen” (107) tongue writhing within it as the source of his speech. What’s more, the voice that Valdemar speaks in after death is described as “gelatinous” (107) and unearthly, terrifying the attendants in the room. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is as much about what characters are unable to communicate as it is about the ability of language to describe medical or supernatural phenomena.
Poe addresses a well-established human desire to know what really happens after death or to eliminate death altogether, and he makes this temptation into the source of horror in his story by communicating evocatively yet ambiguously the agony and terror that Valdemar feels when placed in an extreme, unprecedented condition between life and death. That so much is left in the dark, and ultimately goes unexplained, essentially aligns the story, however fantastic, with the reality that it is impossible for us to know what one experiences after death.
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