Haribol Acharya
We are accustomed to reading stories that have a distinct plot, a comprehensible theme and a flow that follows certain concepts, prescribed narrations. But some stories, and of course modern literary stories diverge from that standard, are at times bizarrely strategized to confuse the reader. Life is unpredictable, so should be the story. That is the way the reader should relate storytelling and reading writing to life. To be lifelike. Authentic, entertaining, edifying, finally defying even the institution.
Stories mirror human societies no doubt but sometimes stories delve into the human mind so deeply that it like poetry lets slip what goes inside the psyche, though normally that goes unsaid for a variety of reasons. Stories go unaltered as things happen inside the character. As such stories canalize human emotions, and streams of thoughts that flood the mind. Or else in the ordinary course of life what one feels or thinks or imagines are censured immensely prior to finding an outlet. In other terms, people are tabooed to speak what they think or dream at times. People can think anything about anybody and imagine the unimaginable, dream something that frightens the dreamers if they fail to understand or interpret the dreams. That was what psychoanalysts starting with Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung did. Reinterpret the otherwise none-interpretable. Ordinary men are often daunted by their dreams. Our conscious minds censure certain ideas or some wild cravings, but dreams do not censure anything. Anything is possible in dreams. And also in our imagination. Dreams do not comply with any moral standards, religious and cultural prohibitions or civilizational customs and conventions. Man though most often act to be social, moral, religious, and mannered but the primitive brute inside him is still alive with his instincts, cravings, rages though they are covered by our civilizational or conscientious mentalities. In plain terms the brute is set free in stories and poems. Despite the fact that the roots of these civilizational or cultural tendencies are skin-deep they oftentimes keep harrowing and horrifying. This is wherein Edgar Alan Poe finds his place to express the otherwise inexpressible, to let the devil break through the cell.
Returning to the titled story in this write-up, first of all it bears a lot of relevance to write about Edgar Alan Poe’s style of writing. To condense his style of story writing into a few words, he wrote mostly following the gothic traditions in which stories are woven making use maximally of some elements like dark, supernatural, grotesque or surreal entities, themes, and mysticisms blended with airs of romanticism.
‘Loss of Breath’ is one of the most anthologized stories of Poe. This is a satirized tale, the one in which the narrator happened to lose his breath and he is incessantly looking for his misplaced breath. There is an air of absurdity, for Mr. Lackobreath, the narrator, is all through his journey is dismembered, and erroneously to be dead and even buried and yet he does his best to reclaim his life.
He was a representative poet or storyteller in American literature in the nineteenth century. In this story the author has used plenty of supernatural themes, and concomitantly he signalled how transcendentalism and pseudoscience were predominant in that time, for people were not sure of the discoveries of science, and people believed that human spirits transcended human bodies. And the general public, when they fell sick were disinclined to let medical practitioners use their health and dissect their bodies should it be necessary.
In nineteenth century America medicines and fiction were somewhat main subjects of writers since practitioners were somewhat criticized for their lack of proper diagnoses and procedures.
Poe’s most stories are ghoulishly and morbidly projected, and he in this story kept accounts of both physicians who were not mature enough to slice up the body and on the other hand people’s obsession with prevailing beliefs and mystical bodies centre around the theme of the story.
The story commences with Mr. Lackobreath, the narrator defaming his wife on the very morning of their wedding. He shouts at his wife straining his longs and as a result he loses his breath in utmost fury. Then he isolates himself to reflect over, even after through careful searches he failed to find his breath. To hide his predicament he boards an overcrowded board and to his horror oversize men displaced his head and limbs. He was pronounced dead by a physician, the body is thrown to the lands near the tavern. The landlord of the tavern sells the body to a surgeon. The surgeon dissects him and notices signs of movements. However, an apothecary thinks he is dead. They use even electrical devices. And the surgeon postpones the examination for a while. When the body was placed in the attic two cats bite his nose and Mr. Lackobreath regains control of himself. He jumps out and falls into a hangman’s cart.
The guarding men of the cart were a sleeping driver and two drunk recruits who presuming that Mr. Lackobreath is a culprit and he is hanged but since he had to breath nothing happens to him and his body is buried at a vault.
The story proceeds with some other events finally to reach a stage. Suddenly Mr. Lackobreath comes upon his neighbor named Mr. Windenough who accommodates him in the end, for some unexplainable reason.
Do we find here something we seek in the tradition of storytelling asking of the narrator or the storywriter a beginning, and an ending that is sequenced. None.
And that is why Poe is interesting, mysterious and appealing. And the reader must contemplate a lot when it comes to the reading of this story or any other story of this writer who enjoys using somber, macabre and gruesome subjects and themes in his stories and poems. Unlike most of his stories this one is somewhat humorous, and light and one arrives at an air of absurdity in the end.
