In "Berenice", Poe was following the popular traditions of Gothic fiction, a genre well-followed by American and British readers for several decades. Poe, however, made his Gothic stories more sophisticated, dramatizing terror by using more realistic images. This story is one of Poe's most violent. As the narrator looks at the box which he may subconsciously know contains his cousin's teeth, he asks himself, "Why... did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?" Poe does not actually include the scene where the teeth are pulled out. The reader also knows that Egaeus was in a trance-like state at the time, incapable of responding to evidence that his cousin was still alive as he committed the gruesome act. Additionally, the story emphasizes that all 32 of her teeth were removed.