How Does Edgar Allan Poe Use Rhetorical Devices

Punctuation and style
Poe uses short, exclamatory sentences as the story progresses and picks up pace as the characters actions and thinking become more irrational. Examples of this include the use of exclamation marks to speed up the story’s momentum. This injects excitement and pulls the reader along, powerless to prevent what is obviously going to be an unsettling conclusion. He also uses dashes in many of his short sentences. This also builds up mounting tension, which makes the text more fragmented and chaotic and echoes the narrator’s train of thought.
He also uses juxtaposition by contrasting short, blunt sentences with ramblingly excessive longer ones.
“I foamed—I raved—I swore!” (para 9)
“True!—Nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why do you say I’m mad?” (para 1)

These sentences show the disorder of the narrator’s mind and his/her all-consuming hysteria. He/she has a distorted sense of reality. He/she thinks the old man is watching and judging him when he is watching and judging the old man.
Madness
Poe uses a lot of repetition throughout the story. This suggests the narrator has an obsessive and troubled mind and is unhinged. The narrator engages the reader directly posing questions to him/her (a clear sign of madness is talking to people you can’t see) and throwing out unnerving statements from the very outset without explaining them.
“But why will you say that I am mad?” (para