Tell Tale Heart Annotation

Have you ever felt so irritated that you decided to do something about it? Do you ever regret what you did? The Tell Tale Heart is a famous short story created by Edgar Allen Poe. He had first published the short story in January 1843, in The Pioneer magazine. Poe’s of strong diction, detailed imagery, and figurative language creates the tone of menace in the story, The Tell-Tale Heart. The use of diction is very strong and useful towards the tone of menace. “ Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrusted it in!” (203) As shown above the author included the word cunningly, which includes a different feeling or connotation than a common word like cleverly or carefully. Cunningly surrounded by feelings of many traits not just like

“One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” (203) The picture of the vulture creates a dark and scary menacing tone. It describes and helps the reader how and what the Old Man’s eye looks like and how evil and weird that eye is. “And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it-- oh so gently! And then, when I made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head.” (203) This piece of evidence shows a tone of menace because Poe describes vividly how he goes into the Old Man’s room so he can kill him. He uses his vivid description to lure the reader into the room with him and show him how “cunningly” he went into the room. “But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye.” (204) As shown above, Poe shows menace through the narrator's choice of sneaking in the Old Man’s room. This creates the tone of menace because the image of that murder makes it easy to imagine yourself as the narrator and feeling what he