Tell Tale Heart Literary Devices

In the story, Poe uses symbolism to show that the eye is the reason to kill him. On page one, paragraph two it says “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture… Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold.” This shows that the narrator was getting tired of the old man’s eye and that it was his time to go. This is important because that is the start of what the story’s going to be about. To add on, page 2, paragraph 3 says, “I undid it just so much that a single ray fell upon the vulture eye… for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.” This shows

2In the second paragraph of "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe establishes the young man's obsession with that blind eye when he writes: "He had the eye of the vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it." 3This "vulture eye" is evoked over and over again in the story until the reader becomes as obsessed with it as does the young man. 4His use of the vivid, concrete word "vulture" establishes a specific image in the mind of the reader that is inescapable.

Poe's economic style of writing is a key instrument in making this story amazing. In this story, he uses his style to truly bring out what he intended for the story - a study of paranoia. In example, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. " it is easy to see that Poe used short sentences, to capture the rapid thoughts of a twisted mind.

This makes the narrator untrustworthy and unreliable. This also helps to illustrate Dark Romanticism’s questioning of mankind. Poe focuses on how unstable the narrator is and how the unconscious mind can destroy a man. The narrator drove himself absolutely crazy over the old man’s mysterious eyeball. He was obsessed with the eye and this caused the narrator to have extreme paranoia. The reader never finds out

What happens when an individual descends into madness? This process is the focus of both Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain.” Both texts use many structural techniques and literary devices to draw attention to the central idea of insanity. This insanity takes the form of a deviation from what the reader would consider normal. In spite of the two authors’ drastically different writing styles, one element remains constant, the masterful use of punctuation.

The narrator’s relationship with the elderly man is never disclosed in the story. What is known is that he feared the man’s “vulture eye”. It is describe as pale blue with a film over it. The narrator states that “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…” Due to this discomfort, the narrator believes the only rational solution to this problem is by killing the old man. His actions demonstrate the possibility that the narrator suffered from some variation of mental illness. In addition, the narrator tends to repeatedly tell readers that he isn’t mad. He doesn’t believe that any of his actions in the story make him mad. The narrator acts in a wisely but, cautious manner as he carries out the stalking and eventual murder of this poor old man, something in which he

It is because of this "evil eye" landing on him that the narrator decides he must murder the man. Why must the narrator be rid of the eye’s gaze? The eye has been separated from the old man, who is kind. The narrator’s insanity has caused this separation to happen. Once the eye is separate from the old man, it becomes murderousness object to the narrator” (Ramirez Web).

An unnamed narrator opens the story by addressing the reader and claiming that he is anxious but not angry. He says that he is going to tell a story in which he will preserve his sanity yet confess to having murdered an old man. His motivation was neither passion nor yearning for money, but rather a fear of the man’s pale blue eye. Again, he insists that he is not crazy because his calm and measured actions, though unlawful, are not those of a madman. Every night, he went to the old man’s apartment and secretly observed the man sleeping.

The two men live together in harmony, but the narrator is having issues with the old man’s eye. Throughout the story the narrator struggles with the “old man.” For seven nights the narrator goes into the old man’s room. He looks over him with a lantern in hand. The narrator has nothing against the old man, but, on the eight night he snaps.

The Killer was finding excuses to justify his murder of the Old Man, and it is shown throughout the story. Another example of the Killer’s dread is his growing anxiety on page 305 when he said, “I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety had seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbor!”

After the death of the old man, the reader is introduced to a new side of the narrator when his human-like emotions are shown. For example, when the narrator is questioned by the officers, at first he is calm and collected. He then becomes more anxious once they begin to stay awhile at the crime scene where the narrator placed chairs out of his assurance that he would not be caught in his act of madness. On page 8 of the short story, he states, “Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer!

Within the story, something is always either holding power over or haunting and taunting the narrator. While the old man is living it is his evil, vulture-like eye that haunts the narrator and after his death it is the steady beat of what is thought to be the old man’s heart that drives the narrator to madness. The eye of the old man has such a strong presence and power within the story. In the beginning of the story the narrator tells the readers, “I loved the old man.

With the story being so short, it is clear that there is thematic symbolism of the elderly man’s eye. The narrator first introduces the eye when discussing why he wanted to kill the old man. In admitting that the man never did him wrong and that he loved him but, he concludes that “it was his eye!” that haunted him. He goes on to describe that “He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” (Poe 691). It is made clear very soon that the eye is not only of importance but also the cause of conflict. The narrator separates the eye, which he calls the “Evil Eye”, from the man. While it is not the old man that is the problem, it is the eye; he says “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 691). The eye is what triggers his ultimate rampage of murder and dismembering. E. Arthur Robison from the University of California explains that “his [the narrator’s] sensitivity to sight is equally disturbing, for it is the old man’s eye which first vexed him and which he seeks to destroy.” There is importance in the idea of the eye triggering an immediate and quick action, the murder, while the rest of the story is prolonged. He

The narrator blames the old man’s eye for all his trouble and decides to kill him. For seven nights, right about midnight he carefully sneaks into the old mans bedroom and staring at him for a while, but the old man always seems to sleep; therefore, his eyes do not threaten the narrator as much. The eight night, the old man suddenly wakes up and opens his eyes while the narrator tries to sneak into his room. This triggers the narrator’s disturbed mind and finally got the strength to execute his plan. He kills the old man, carefully cuts him

“The Tell Tale Heart”, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe which details the murder of an innocent old man with a “vulture” like eye that infuriates the unnamed narrator; he describes with a joyous excitement, the planning and execution of the killing as well as the hiding of the corpse in the floorboards. Poe uses literary devices such as authorial intrusion, italics, and cacophony to create a manic voice for the narrator.