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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In this story, teeth symbolize an obsession that transforms beauty into horror. Berenice’s teeth are the only part of her body unaffected by her disease. Therefore, they remain flawlessly beautiful while the rest of her body decays. They are also consistently described as white, a color often associated with purity and female beauty. However, the story subverts this association by portraying their color as disturbing. The narrator describes the teeth as “long, narrow, and excessively white” (335), suggesting that their whiteness is too much, rather than ideal. The teeth are often framed as shining out from the darkness, using the contrast of light and dark imagery to portray them as frightening and ghostly, rather than beautiful. When Egæus goes to see Berenice’s corpse, the teeth frighten him: “Through the enveloping gloom, once again there glared upon me in too palpable reality, the white and glistening, and ghastly teeth of Berenice” (335). The final image of the teeth scattering across the floor indicates that while they remain “white and glistening” (336), the situation and their context as objects stolen from a woman believed to be dead make it impossible for them to be beautiful.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
A Dream Within a Dream
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Annabel Lee
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Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
Ligeia
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Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
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The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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The Fall of the House of Usher
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The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
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The Imp of the Perverse
The Imp of the Perverse
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The Lake
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The Man of the Crowd
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The Masque of the Red Death
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The Murders in the Rue Morgue
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
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The Oval Portrait
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The Philosophy of Composition
The Philosophy of Composition
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