The Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, it is classified as a short story with horror fiction as the genre. This was written in three different types of fear during the Romanticism period. In this short story the encounter is filtered through the eyes of the unnamed dynamic narrator. The narrator consumes upon the old man’s eye and determines to perform a conscious act of murder. Fear is defined as a horrid feeling that is caused by a belief that a person or something is unsafe, most likely to cause grief, or any type of threat. It is something that people can first experience as children, and is accustomed to respond to in many different ways. Some people live in constant fear; of accidents, of bad people doing any harm, or of physical disorders. Others only obtain things as they come in life, whether they are good or horrible things. Edgar Allen Poe describes fear in “The Tell-Tale Heart” in three ways such as gore, the mood, and insanity.

Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator both experiences guilt from killing the old man in which he cared for and also the constant plea of proving his sanity. The narrator one day decides that he should kill the old man in which he cares for, due to the fact that he had an evil eye. Though insane and bizarre, the narrator thinks that he is not crazy; he just has heightened senses that allow him to hear things that no human could ever hear. The telling of the story from whatever prison or asylum the narrator is sentenced to is his way of proving his sanity. In the "Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allan Poe uses irony, imagery, and symbolism to depict how the guilt of a human being will always be consumed by their own conscience.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator’s obsession causes an unjust death which culminates into internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the reader is presented with the short story of a madman who narrates his murder of an old man because, “he had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 105). The narrator has thought thoroughly about his plan to murder this old man, and the murderer then stashes his body underneath the floorboards. Eventually, his guilt overcomes him and he starts hallucinating that he hears the old man’s heartbeat. Ultimately, he confesses to the police about his crime after being driven to the point of insanity due to his remorse. “The Tale Tell Heart” is one of Poe’s best-known stories because he utilizes the elements of Gothic Literature to establish a disturbing sense of mystery throughout the story. Farida characterizes Gothic Literature as “the elements of fear, horror, the supernatural and darkness” (Foster 1), and Poe effectively adopts this style in many of his short story. These ominous characteristics give the story both a dark and spontaneous sequence of events that draws the reader in. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe employs several Gothic elements such as the setting, emotion, and the word choice in order to communicate an uncertain description of reality. In any case, Poe 's technique definitely holds your attention coming into the story.

Edgar Allan Poe has a dark sense of literary meaning. Within "The Tell-Tale Heart" it 's shown when Poe incorporates dark elements of literacy through the guilt of a murder. Which became forced out by the hypothetical beating of a heart.

“The Tell Tale Heart” is a famous short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. The story was first published in 1843. This story is about an unnamed man who kills an elderly man due to his “vulture eye”. The man serves as the narrator in this story and describes to readers in detail as he carefully stalks the man, kills him and hides his body under his floorboards after he cuts him up. Eventually, the narrator’s guilt eats him alive to the point that he confesses his crime to three visiting policemen. His guilt takes form as the old man’s heart, which he believes is still beating underneath the floorboards. This short story is considered one of the Poe’s most famous short stories as well as a Gothic fiction classic.

To many, murder is an act that no sane person could possibly commit but is it possible for one to prove their mental stability through the telling of their own transgression? Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a murder mystery in which we know who the killer is; however his motives seem to be elusive and unclear. This story deals with paranoia, one’s descent into madness, and the role that guilt has on one’s conscious. One would say that that the readers view on reality becomes warped as he or she identifies with story in ways they may not fully understand. “The Tell Tale Heart” triggers the readers curiosity right from the beginning and pulls them along as the narrator tells his story of murder which shows some insight on the chilling and frightening mind that the narrator possesses; the reality of a mad man. Through Poe’s carefully structured syntax and use of literary elements such as symbolism and irony, we can begin to understand the narrator’s maze-like mind and the reality of how someone can possibly kill another person.

Poe also creates fear and dread through Suspense. One way he creates suspense in the story is by the Sounds you can imagine through the story. Through the story the narrator is in the room of the old man, which the room is so quiet that he can hear the sound of the beetles eating away at the house and bed. The beetles eating at the bed created a feeling of impending death and the deathwatch of the beetles. “Just as I have done, night after night, harkening to the death watches in the wall. (Poe 304)”This created for the listener an unsettling feeling. In the beginning of the story the narrator tells us that he is not insane that he is normal. As the story goes on you see that he repeats himself several times and does sound like a crazy person. As a normal or sane person would have just moved out or told the old man that his eye bothered him, but the narrator kills the old man over his unsightly eye.

In ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ Edgar Allen Poe’s main weapon of choice to frighten readers is tension. The story starts with the narrator about to tell his story of murder. “TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” the narrator says as the story opens. Right from the beginning, the reader can tell that the narrator is insane.

Even if one feels they may have 'gotten away ' with a crime, the weight of a person’s conscience cannot be concealed. In someone’s life, too much power and control combined with a person’s conscience in a person’s life can and will lead to an imbalance and perhaps insanity as in the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates how the narrator in this story goes through the greed and need for control, leading to his insanity that results in extreme guilt.

In the story “The Tell Tale Heart”, Edgar Allen Poe creates an atmosphere of fear and dread through the narrator’s diligence in his process of slaying the old man, and through his apathetic attitude about the whole murder. Throughout the story the narrator brags about his cunning plan for killing the old man:

Eyes have been said to be the windows to the soul, by looking into them you can get a sense of who this person is. Edgar Allan Poe uses one eye to not only describe one person but two, in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator sees the eye and it is all he can focus on. The eye is no longer a part of the old man but the eye is the old man. This eye represents evil and hatred and every time the narrator sees it the sight of it enrages him more. And that eye and that eye alone representing evil to the narrator sealed the old man’s fate.

“I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs”, said the madman (39). In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the themes are vital for readers to identify with the madman’s reasoning of every single action he executes. Such events as in the first sentence would be difficult, if not impossible, to grasp without the knowledge of any themes. While some individuals may feel that themes are merely add-on elements in similar tales, this analysis will establish quite the contrary. The themes are crucial to the comprehension of this narrative. If these topics were eradicated: readers would not understand the protagonist 's journey, there would be a very minute amount of information to express, readers would find it complicated to discover whether or not the madman was actually mad, and they would not learn the moral of the overall story.

Everyone knows classic fairy tales aren’t the same as the sweet and happy Disney stories we usually hear. But maybe next bedtime you shouldn’t skip over the frightening parts in favor of a “happily ever after”. Scary stories like “The Telltale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe are appropriate as they actually benefit readers. They help children deal with their fears and negative emotions. Also, a chilling story can generate enjoyable, entertaining anxiety.