Valdemar does not fear his own death, but rather accepts it as an inevitability. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter neither to be avoided nor regretted" Poe, pg. Next, he tries to find someone who would be willing to subject themselves to mesmerism while dying, and he recalls his friend Ernest Valdemar, who is a well-known scholar and book author that has resided in " Harlaem, N.Y., since the year 1839" is in poor health, and "For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him, his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. The main problem that the narrator wishes to solve in his quest for knowledge is that nobody has ever been mesmerized right before death, "in articulo mortis," and he wonders if perhaps death could even be avoided if this were done. The narrator is presumably a doctor as well, but this does not appear to be directly established in the story. describes that he has an increasing interest in a process known as Mesmerism, to be more commonly interpreted as hypnotism, or rather, to put someone into a trancelike state of mind, and to thus cause an increased responsiveness to questions. ValdemarĪn unnamed narrator whose first name is P. Stories of Edgar Allan Poe The Facts in the Case of M.
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