Burial Alive

Antigone

condemned to be buried alive, she thwarts Creon’s order by killing herself. [Gk. Lit.: Antigone]

Fortunato

walled up in a catacomb by the man he had wronged. [Am. Lit.: Poe “The Cask of Amontillado”]

Lafourcade, Victorine

found alive in her tomb by her rejected suitor. [Am. Lit.: Poe “The Premature Burial”]

Sindbad

entombed, by custom, upon his wife’s death, he manages to escape. [Arab. Lit.: Arabian Nights; Magill II, 50]

Usher, Madeline

breaks out of vault in which she had been buried alive. [Am. Lit.: Poe “Fall of the House of Usher”]

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References in periodicals archive ?

Presumed dead for three days, he wakes in a dank church, having narrowly escaped burial alive due to the frozen ground.

Wonders Will Never Cease

It is revealing that Act II, Scene 21 is entitled "Otto dreams a dream on the burial alive of a soldier and Bianca interprets the dream." It will by now surprise no one to learn that Otto has, not one dream, but two.

Yehoshua Sobol: a theater in the prophetic mode

He commits hubris through his violent misuse of his temporal power; he too has a duty to bury the dead, and his unjust condemnation of Antigone to death is murder of a near relative, although he changes her sentence from stoning to burial alive in order to avoid the formal pollution which would accompany such a deed.