Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is perhaps the best-known American Romantic who worked in the so-called Gothic mode. His poems and stories explore the darker side of the Romantic imagination, dealing with the Grotesque, the supernatural, and the horrifying
I think the casket is a symbol of death and it is also a symbol of cruelty of the narrator that he took Doodle to see it and touch it to emphasize that they thought he was going to die so needed to be brought face to face with it.
