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Comparing The Raven And The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

Decent Essays

In the famous words of Edgar Allan Poe, “This story is told through the eyes of a madman… Who, like all of us, believed that he was sane.” Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet that experienced life in the Romantic Period and throughout his life of writing poems, he was known to have a dark and mysterious style. Poe uses these types of writings in many of his works such as: “The Raven” (1205 - 1208), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1173 - 1186), and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1186 - 1190) and many, many more. This style of writing he uses for his poems are coated with emotional tones and his most susceptible works are crafted as a gothic work of art in the Romantic Period. Edgar Allan Poe has a uniqueness about him that no one else has when he …show more content…

The main theme of this story is insanity that is collectively entered into the entire story but the style of writing is in a very gothic tone. The gothic style of writing is described with the help of these elements: abnormal psychological behavior, creating a gloomy or threatening atmosphere, connections between the setting and his characters’ thought process or behavior, and supernatural components. Since Poe uses these topics in this gothic style poem, it constructs the main theme in “The Tell-Tale …show more content…

The narrator demonstrates his craziness at the earliest reference point by ranting about his anxiety and states his panic that the reader will accept he is mad, “How, then, am I mad? Harken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story,” (Poe, 1187). The insignificant truth that he fears being thought of as a crazy person does not demonstrate that his mind is abnormal. Poe displays the storyteller's psychotic thoughts by having him express that his suspicious murder has no reason behind it, “it haunted me day and night. Objects there wasn’t none. Passion there was none,” (Poe, 1187). The reader of this poem is able to see the madness of the narrator once more when he admits his plan to the audience, explaining, “Ha!-would a madman have been so wise as this?” (Poe, 1187). In the end the storyteller's psychotic thoughts outwits him and he slaughters the old man, yet subsequently, his mentality is out of control, odd, and cruel, “in an instant, I drag him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I smile gaily, to find the deed so far done,” (Poe, 1189). By having the storyteller grin a gruesome smile in the wake of murdering the old man, Poe makes a vivid image of a raving lunatic in the audience’s thoughts. As the plot thickens, so does the storyteller's derangement. The police came to the

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