Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

1244 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Scope and delimitation of edgar allan poe's work

“The Tell Tale Heart” There are many different constituent parts in a horror story. Elements such as suspense, the source of the horror, characters, structure, plot, and the lesson learned, are all things that contribute to the overall theme of the story. They add the the “wow factor” that hooks readers in from the start. They work together to convey the importance of the author’s ideas and creations. This essay will explain each element and how it’s role in, “The Tell Tale Heart”, make it one of the best horror stories ever written. “The Tell Tale Heart” is a horror story written by Edgar Allen Poe in 1843. It focuses on the harsh crime committed by a insane caregiver. The story starts out with the week leading up to the murder. The caregiver awaits in the old man’s doorway waiting for the perfect time to attack. When the caregiver finally sees the old man’s eye, he makes his move. He suffocates the old man with is old mattress then disassembles his body. After that, he buries the remains in the floor boards. Later that night, the police arrive on a disturbance call and take a stroll through the house. The caregiver offers them a seat to rest from their fatigue, but they had no idea that the caregiver had placed their seats right above the dead body. Towards the end of the story, the caregiver starts to hear a sound …show more content…

In The “Tell Tale Heart”, the old man’s “vulture eye” is the source of horror for the caregiver (lines 13-14). You can infer that the old man has cataracts, a medical condition where the lens of your eye becomes opaque, causing a film to present over your eye. Although, the caregiver does not know this and believes the eye is evil and is there to haunt him day and night (lines 8-9). In order to stop the eye and for him to go back to normal he must end the old man’s life (lines 15-16). He waits in the doorway of the old man’s bedroom for a week trying to find the perfect time to

Show More
Related

  • Insanity In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

    1008 Words  | 3 Pages

    The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.

    Read More

  • The Use Of Iconography In 'The Tell Tale Heart' By Edgar Allan Poe

    951 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edgar Allan Poe is one of the greatest authors of all time, and many critics and readers consider him a Horror genre type writer. Many of Poe’s stories could be considered some of the best of the horror genre, but his famous short story The Tell Tale Heart could be considered the best of his writing in horror. The Tell Tale Heart was first published in 1843, and was published in James Russell Lowell’s The Pioneer in January. The short story is of a man or women who is trying to convince his/her sanity to the readers while also describing a murder that he committed. Although, throughout the story the more the narrator tried to justify his/her actions by saying that the old man that he/she murdered had an eye that drove her crazy, and that was

    Read More

  • The Tell-Tale Heart Literary Analysis

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    The story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a short horror story about the narrator going insane and ends up killing a old man. It first starts off by the narrator going into the old man’s house spying on him. At night, exactly at midnight the narrator goes into the old man's house and watches him sleep. The narrator has a deep hate for one of the old man’s eye, he states it by saying, “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-a pale 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 forever” (Poe, 355). One night while spying on the old man his thumb slipped on a tin, which frightened the old man. The narrator then stayed quiet for a long time, but then instantly killed the old man. He hid the body all around the house. A neighbor heard a scream during the night so they called the police, which arrived at the house. The narrator acted calmly and let the police in to search the house. Then the police wouldn’t leave the

    Read More

  • Tell-tale Heart Literary Analysis

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Like many of Poe's other works, the Tell-Tale Heart is a dark story. This particular one focuses on the events leading the death of an old man, and the events afterwards. That's the basics of it, but there are many deep meanings hidden in the three page short story. Poe uses techniques such as first person narrative, irony and style to pull off a believable sense of paranoia.

    Read More

  • Insanity In The Tell Tale Heart

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    His attention to detail helps him when he is hiding the body, but when the police come, he falls apart. Claiming that he is sane at every corner the reader turns, the narrator finds out fear is an overwhelming force which causes him to give himself away. The presence of fear, attention to detail, and state of sanity that combine to create the theme of "The Tell-Tale Heart" are seen in the narrator and shown to the reader in a way that, even though the narrator is insane, the reader understands him when he expresses his fear of the old man 's eye. The reader also feels the anxiety of being caught when the police come. With the theme the human condition allows them to see only what they want to see and nothing more, Edgar Allan Poe is able to use the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" as a shocking

    Read More

  • How Does Edgar Allen Poe Create a Feeling of Madness Throughout "the Tell-Tale Heart"?

    1094 Words  | 3 Pages

    ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is a story of tension using methods of time noise and suspense. I think that the story is excellent because it is different to most horror stories, as it is not very cliché. Also, I like the detail Poe used through the story.

    Read More

  • Point of view "Tell-Tale Heart"

    609 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Moral Insanity In Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Tell-Tale Heart is a story about a man whom, plagued by mental disorder, takes the life of a man. The narrator claims to have love for the old man and insist that it is the old man 's vulture eye that he cannot stand. He watches the old man for seven nights before killing him, dismembering the body, and hiding the evidence. The narrator ends up confessing to his crime to police officers after he is driven mad by the beating of the, now dead, old man 's heart.

    Read More

  • Insanity in The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".

    Read More

  • The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    "Now this is the point. Your fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me"(42 Backpack Literature). Reading such words can create a wide imagination about what the character is truly like. The narrator in the story has an indirect personality where as you read you find out more and more about him.The narrator in Edger Allan Poe's "The Tell- Tale Heart" seems like he makes himself completely insane but as readers we are never told of any psychological problems, if any, that he may have.The characterization by Poe of the narrator crease a puzzle which makes the story interesting. I would characterize the narrator as being secretive, insane and nervous.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Tell Tale Heart And Tell Tale Heart

    1860 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tell-Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allan Poe, depicts the inner conflict of a murderer as he retells his story of how he came to kill the old man as a means to prove his sanity. The story is told in the point of view of an unreliable narrator, of whom is greatly disturbed by the eye of a geriatric man. The eye in question is described as evil, irritating the narrator beyond his comprehension, to the point when he has no choice but to get rid of the vexation by destroying the eye. This short story is similar to The Black Cat, of which is also penned by Poe. In The Black Cat, the narrator, albeit unreliable, describes his wrongdoings to the reader. He tells his story of how he murdered his wife, killed one of the two cats, and trapped the other

    Read More

  • Perceptions of Human Nature in A Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

    573 Words  | 2 Pages

    Human nature is a conglomerate perception which is the dominant liable expressed in the short story of “A Tell-Tale Heart”. Directly related, Edgar Allan Poe displays the ramifications of guilt and how it can consume oneself, as well as disclosing the nature of human defense mechanisms, all the while continuing on with displaying the labyrinth of passion and fears of humans which make a blind appearance throughout the story. A guilty conscience of one’s self is a pertinent facet of human nature that Edgar Allan Poe continually stresses throughout the story. The emotion that causes a person to choose right from wrong, good over bad is guilt, which consequently is one of the most ethically moral and methodically powerful emotion known to human nature. Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe displays the narrator to be rather complacent and pompous, however, the narrator establishes what one could define as apprehension and remorse after committing murder of an innocent man. It is to believe that the narrator will never confess but as his heightened senses blur the lines between real and ...

    Read More

  • The Narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart

    883 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the first person narrator, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" illustrates how man's imagination is capable of being so vivid that it profoundly affects people's lives. The manifestation of the narrator's imagination unconsciously plants seeds in his mind, and those seeds grow into an unmanageable situation for which there is no room for reason and which culminates in murder. The narrator takes care of an old man with whom the relationship is unclear, although the narrator's comment of "For his gold I had no desire" (Poe 34) lends itself to the fact that the old man may be a family member whose death would monetarily benefit the narrator. Moreover, the narrator also intimates a caring relationship when he says, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (34). The narrator's obsession with the old man's eye culminates in his own undoing as he is engulfed with internal conflict and his own transformation from confidence to guilt.

    Read More

  • The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe

    855 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “The Tell Tale Heart” Edgar Allan Poe builds up suspense by guiding us through the darkness that dwells inside his character’s heart and mind. Poe masterfully demonstrates the theme of guilt and its relationship to the narrator’s madness. In this classic gothic tale, guilt is not simply present in the insistently beating heart. It insinuates itself earlier in the story through the old man’s eye and slowly takes over the theme without remorse. Through his writing, Poe directly attributes the narrator’s guilt to his inability to admit his illness and offers his obsession with imaginary events - The eye’s ability to see inside his soul and the sound of a beating heart- as plausible causes for the madness that plagues him. After reading the story, the audience is left wondering whether the guilt created the madness, or vice versa.

    Read More

  • Critical Analysis of Poe's The Tell Tale Heart

    1651 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man's eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed 'perfect'; crime. People tend to think that insane persons are beyond the normal realm of reason shared by those who are in their right mind. This is not so; guilt is an emotion shared by all humans. The most demented individuals are not above the feeling of guilt and the havoc it causes to the psyche. Poe's use of setting, character, and language reveal that even an insane person feels guilt. Therein lies the theme to The Tell Tale Heart: The emotion of guilt easily, if not eventually, crashes through the seemingly unbreakable walls of insanity.

    Read More

More about Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

Open Document