The Tell Tale Heart Rhetorical Analysis

Taking into account the previous descriptions and the definitions of horror and terror we will try to identify which of these stories presents horror and which one may be said to go deeper by portraying terror. The Pit and the pendulum is characterized by having a narrator who seems in absolute use of his mental faculties. As it is mentioned above, this character is aware of what is happening around him and by having a peak of his logical thoughts and feelings the reader experiences the struggle of the narrator to stay alive in a much more personal way. The fact that this character is sane, integrated and coherent in his thinking is one of the reasons why the reader may sense the terror of the story on a whole other level.

Many murder investigations lead in killers pleading over their innocence to the crime they’ve committed. However "A Tell-Tale Heart", does not follow the same stereotypical scenario. The usual story of the innocent killer getting caught takes a quick turn when the narrator tells all that he is guilt. All the while he is still claiming that he is still sane and that he was completely aware of his actions. Poe spins the entire narration into a dark, eery place when the read is unsure of their role in the story. Poe uses ethos to explain how he lures people into continuously reading his stories, Logos to show exactly how he does and uses Pathos to demonstrate how nonsensical the crime was.

Edgar Allan Poe creates an atmosphere of fear and dread in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the setting and the narrator. He creates these feelings through the setting, from the fact that it happens at night. Darkness creates an eerie feeling, because you cannot see what could be right next to you. Poe writes about this when he says, “His room was as black as a pitch with the thick darkness…” (Poe 304). From this one can conclude that the darkness is so thick in the room you can almost feel it. The darkness has secrets only the daring would want to know. Another way the setting creates fear is the fact that it’s in the old man’s bedroom. You are vulnerable there at its one of the places you would least expect someone to be. This is shown when Poe writes, “…and the

Communication with God comes sunup to sundown, remembering to turn off the outside noise so one can seek the solitude and to hear God's message. Furthermore, opening our inner most intimate thought process and letting God in.

The Tell-Tale Heart Is it possible for someone to be crazy and not know? In the short story The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, this question is answered. His story is based around a mentally unstable man, obsessed with an elder’s eye. It “...was the eye, his evil eye.” (pg 65) Poe wrote.

Starting off With Tell Tale Heart, in the beginning, the narrator of the story is shown as a caring person who allowed the old man to leave with him and help the old men with what he needed. But later on in the story, he starts getting very paranoid he says, “But why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them (Tell-tale heart).” The disease that he is talking about was nervousness his nervousness makes him start to become paranoid of the old guys eye. He called his eye the ‘Vulture eye” and described it as a,” A pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold. Which led to the narrator going mad and plan the old man’s death. This led to Poe’s character turning mad which led to him planning to make old man’s life away. He says that for one week he would go into the old man’s room at midnight and look at him for a couple minutes then later on in the

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” This quote could possibly be related to Poe’s characters in that their own character is measured on how they handle fear and terror. Harry Baker said of character and reactions to fear, “The mystery and surprise of character is in truth the great spectacle of this human life of ours...In a given set of circumstances, how will a certain individual (and no other) act?(Baker 143.) Poe brings his mystery into his stories by making his characters unpredictable with how they will handle their fear. The endings in each story are very much weighted by how how each character does respond to fear stimuli. Looking at The Tell Tale Heart the narrator says, “In the quiet night, in the dark silence of the bedroom my anger became fear — for the heart was beating so loudly that I was sure someone must hear. The time had come! I rushed into the room, crying, “Die! Die!” The old man gave a loud cry of fear as I fell upon him and held the bedcovers tightly over his head. Still his heart was beating; but I smiled as I felt that success was near. For many minutes that heart continued to beat; but at last the beating stopped. The old man was dead. I took

The reader is subject to feelings of fear, anxiety and shock. Also horror genres generally anticipates the characters psychology. It shows how the person can go from a stable individual to loosing all sanity which was also a characteristic offered in The Black Cat. While The Black Cat offers the psychology of the unknown man we are also offered this particular element in Poe's The Tell Tale Heart. One can see signs of deterioration of the narrator. He continually lets it be known that he is fine and has no symptoms of anger however his actions state other wise. The narrator also suggest that no feelings of remorse or guilt can be noted almost as if no wrong has been done. The narrator is going through a downward spiral of psychological matters which is an element offered on horror fiction as this allows the reader to achieve those emotions of anxiety, fear and again suspense. Poe offers almost all elements of horror throughout his short stories without the gore and brutality which ultimately makes him a phenomenal writer. Poe is more in tune with allowing the reader to accomplish emotion while allowing them the reader to get a sense of who they are in terms of what frightens them and offers them

Another impression in accordance to terror and Edgar Allan Poe is that through fear of the outside world it can cause horror within a person. This is closely related through the short story “Tell Tale Heart”, as the reader feels an anxiety towards the narrator. This is because the old man in the short story has been separated from his identity and from his physical eye. This causes the narrator to murder the old man as his eye is seen as completely separate, which leads to

As a master of short stories of horror, Edgar Allan Poe is knowledgeable, learned and imaginative. He could skillfully manipulate the words in his literary works to create everything people can think of. The masterful use of the symbols, objects intensify the readers’ nerve as the typical elements of horror in Poe’s short stories, and therefore it is also a feature which makes Poe 's stories different from other writers.

Poe uses literary devices commonly throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart” to convey a more in depth account of the narrator's mental state. To begin, Foreboding is used to foretell the fate of the old man. For example, due to the myth that death watches appear when death is near, the presence of these creatures forebodes a nearby death. “He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall” (Poe). The mention of the death watches insights uncertainty due to the unknowing nature of what is about to happen next contributing to the uneasy mood of the narrative. Secondly, Irony is used to depict how the narrator defends himself by contradicting what he says. For instance, the narrator unconsciously creates the direct conflicting idea by emphasizing his love for the old man, nonetheless murdering him subsequently, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe has the literary theory of physiological reader response theory helps the reader to come to the conclusion that paranoia was the character's motive. This conclusion is significant because of acute hearing, the eye looking like a vulture and lastly the events leading to the kill. The narrator of this story has introduced us to himself telling the reader that he is not insane, he has a disease that has sharpen his senses, therefore he hears all things from the heavens and hell. In the second paragraph Poe writes, “ It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” He had no reason to kill the man, he never wronged him and his intention was not to take the man's gold, just his eye. His eye haunted him because the eye was dead,and whenever the old man's gaze fell upon him his blood ran cold and he began to start to feel uneasy. The events leading up to the kill all began with the stalk of the prey.

The author often leaves out certain information that may contain little relevancy to the plot itself, but urges the audience to create their own scenario based on the textual evidence provided. The audience is engaged and Poe succeeds in captivating them through the concept of the unknown. In The Pit and the Pendulum, a man is sent to to an underground torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition era. Throughout his time there, he experiences several attempts of torture from his jailers; as such, a pit with ghastly remains in it. The audience is merely informed about how horrid the pit is that the character

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator was very agitated by the old man's vulture eye. The narrator is bothered by the old man’s cloudy, pale blue eye, which has incited madness in the narrator. Whenever the old man looks at him, his blood turns cold, and he becomes determined to kill him to get rid of this curse. The narrator goes to the old man’s house for seven days in a row to attempt to kill him but failed. “You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shout out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye”(Poe,12). The narrator wanted to kill the old man, but waited for him to open his eyes before he killed him on the eighth night. The old man’s vulture eye symbolises a mental condition like the corneal ulcer. But actually shows how the narrator was mad and eventually murdered the old man for his vulture eye. Furthermore, there were many symbolic things about “The Utterly Perfect Murder”.

The Tell-Tale Heart is a grim story. It is full of evil. Poe was the creator of dark story telling. It is the battle between one man battling his guilty conscious, after murdering an elderly man because of his eye. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” narrator Edgar Allen Poe demonstrates how guilt causes a breakdown. The narrator has multiple psychological breakdowns and convicts himself of a crime he could have gotten away with. He tells an obscure tale about murdering an old man. He was known for composing short stories that dealt with murder, horror, and grim feelings. The Tell Tale Heart conveys a sinister, psychological, and personal description leading to his actions. A guilty conscious will speak the loudest.