The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

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A short story I have recentrly read which has an incident or moment of great tension is, "the Tell - Tale Heart," written by Edgar Allen Poe. The short story can produce many different "types" of characters. Usually, these characters are faced with situations that give us an insight into their true "character". The main character of the story is faced with a fear. He is afraid of an Old Man's Eye that lives with him. The actions that this charecter or "man" - as he is known in the story - performs in order to stop his fear can lead others to believe that he suffers from some sort of mental illness. The very fact that this man is so repulsed by the old man's eye, which he refers to as "the evil eye", is reason enough to be suspicious of his character. The man has an inner struggle with the thought that "the evil eye" is watching him and an underlying feeling that "the evil eye" will see the real person that he has become. This paranoia leads the man to believe that the only way he can put down his fears is to kill the old man. It is said that denial is usually the sign of a problem. If this holds true, then the man has the characteristics of a "madman". In the first paragraph, he asks, "but why will you say that I am mad!" This statement can be looked at as a statement made by someone going through a paranoid episode. He talks as if he is in frenzy, especially when he talks about hearing things in heaven and in hell. "The disease had sharpened my senses…Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven…I heard many things in hell." The "disease" that the man is talking about eats away at his conscience

The progression of the story revolves around the actions of the man. He describes the "wise" ways...

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...his eye and the fact that the man does this at the same time everynight shows that he has an obsession purely based on this blind eye that the old man has. Guilt is shown after the killing of the old man when the man starts to hear the beating of old man's heart - which is actually the beating of his own heart but fails to recognise this. This is definitely a story that contains an incident or moment of great tension right from the very beginning. From the man speaking openly about the killing of the old man to the climax scene where he finally finishes what he has started and at the end of the story where he admits to the killing of him. The title "the Tell - Tale Heart" basically sum's up the story in four words, meaning a heart who gave something away, but in this case it is referring to the man's ownheart giving away the secret of the murder he had committed.

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