Introduction:
Lenses:
• Psychological
Question:
• Are there prominent words in the piece of that could have different or hidden meanings?
Opening Statement:
• Sounds play a vital role in parts of life, whether it be lovely or frustrating, it can lead one to commit serious conflicts.
Topic sentence:
• The short story, The Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe, is about an individual who eventually murders an old man because he did not like the old man’s fake eye.
• The narrator feels extremely uncomfortable after allegedly hearing the old man’s heartbeat during the investigation for the murder of the old man. This leads the narrator to make poor choices which change his fate.
Listing Arguments:
• After hearing the old man’s heart beat
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Proof:
• In the story, The Tell-Tale Hearts, the narrator states, “No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice” (Poe 3).
Analysis:
• This clearly elaborates on how the narrator struggles to look relaxed and calm after hearing the old man’s heart beat.
• The narrator knows that he will have to face various consequences for committing a murder, hence, he tries his best to look normal.
• The narrator tries to hide his facial expression by sharpening his style of talking to the investigators. However, the narrator constantly hears the sounds in his subconscious mind, which affects his facial expression during the investigation for the murder of the old man.
• Therefore, the sounds of the old man impact the narrator negatively as he struggles to look calm and relaxed when he constantly hears the sounds and feels guilty.
Concluding Statement:
In conclusion, the old man’s heartbeat heard in the narrator’s subconscious mind negatively impacts him as it changes his behaviour.
Body Paragraph
In “The Tell-Tale Heart” we learn that the unknown narrator has been accused of being mad and this disturbs him.
Moreover, the diction of the narrator and his repeated pleas to the reader to believe this thought, while not truly convincing, serve as a means to support his case. He asks, ”How, then, am I mad?” and “but why will you say that I am mad?” Beyond what could be considered a maniacal monologue, the narrator’s creepy fascination with the old man’s eye further distinguishes mental illness. What is described as “a pale blue eye, with a film over it” is, in all probability, a cataract, which is not nearly as evil as
After the old man is dead and under the floorboards the police arrive, and the narrator remains calm and his "manor had convinced them.?Villains!" "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- Here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!" The narrator of "The Tell Tale Heart" shows that he is unreliable. Concluding the questioning by the police, the narrator had a sudden fear and assumed that the policemen have heard the old man?s heart beat. Not only the narrator could hear the old man?s heart beating, but it is assumed (from the audience perspective) that the police could hear the narrator?s heart beating. The narrator listening to the old man?s heart beat is a replacement of his own consciousness that brought out the guiltiness for murdering the old man.
The police show up at his door, with a neighbor’s claim of a loud noise heard. The man, overflowing with confidence, cheerfully allows the police to search the entire house, as he had previously dismembered the body and hidden it under the floorboards. Finding nothing, the police and him chat for a while in the old man’s room, when suddenly the man hears a faint beating. Quickly becoming louder, the man loses his cheerful disposition and starts to panic. He claims the police were toying with him; they knew all along. Claiming the noise emanated from the dead man’s heart, the man succumbs to the noise, yelling, “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe).
Our purpose here today is to persuade you that the client is deranged and incapable of understanding what he’s done. The client reveals his anxiety toward the reader and other characters several times throughout the story. For instance, he begins the story inquiring, "How then am I mad?" and states, "Observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story" (Paragraph 1). The client then attempts to prove his sanity when the reader has not yet had the opportunity to make any kind of judgment whatsoever. In addition, the client claims to be so distraught with the old man's evil eye that he has decided to commit murder (Paragraph 2). Perhaps he suspected that the man's eye could see that he really was - a mad man! Only a demented man would consider putting a corpse under floor boards (Paragraph 12) and place his own chair upon the very spot beneath which reposed the dead victim (Paragraph 14). Other signs of paranoia are present when the client states that the policemen were mocking his horror, when in actuality they knew nothing of the crime (Paragraph 17). He experiences self caused hallucinations, when he claims to hear the old man's beating heart. For instance, he states, "the beating grew louder, louder...the sound would be heard by a neighbor" (Paragraph 11). It is physically impossible for a heartbeat to be heard at such lengthy distances. Furthermore, it is absurd for a heartbeat of a dead man to be heard at all. Finally, the client suffers from extreme mood changes. This change in mood is reflected in his speech pattern. As the story opens, he states that he will present himself in a tranquil manner. However, as the story progresses, his sentences become fragmented and repetitious. For instance, as he enters the old man's room, he states, "I undid the lantern cautiously--oh, so cautiously--cautiously --I undid it" (Paragraph 3).
In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase from the first paragraph, "The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story." This shows that we are in his thou...
After the man had killed the old man the police showed up. They searched the house and asked some questions and they believed him. Yet somehow while the police officers searched the house and asked him questions all he could hear was the old man’s heartbeat. As mentioned the heartbeat he hears is his own. His heart races because he knows he killed the old man and feels guilty. Once he is in the clear the police officers sit and chat with the man, but he cannot focus. He becomes so desperate and hysterical that he confesses to the police officers about killing the old
In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the storyteller tells of his torment. He is tormented by an old man's Evil Eye. The storyteller had no ill will against the old man himself, even saying that he loved him, but the old man's pale blue, filmy eye made his blood run cold. And when the storyteller couldn't take anymore of the Evil Eye looking at him, he said, "I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever." This is the start of the storyteller’s madness, and as the reader listens to what he says, the madness within the storyteller becomes very apparent.
When he finally succeeded in murdering the old man he became glorified, thinking about how cleverly he accomplished his goal. However, the unsuspecting behaviour in front of the policeman, suggests that the narrator became ignorant of his behaviour and surrounding. This is because he cannot tell the difference between reality and his inner thoughts. He presumes that he has correctly and reasonably explained all the events of the story in a typical manner. Furthermore, he thinks the police officers and the neighbours hear the heart beating through the walls. Instead, it’s all in his mind because the heartbeat would only be heard when the narrator was in stress. This relinquishes us a clue that the heartbeat was a symbol of agony to him. The sound in the last few paragraphs of the short story is noticeable as an increase in sound. In the short story it states, (Poe, pg 106) “The ringing became more...it continued and became more distinct”. The increase of the beating is emphasized repeatedly. His repetition of the word “louder” echoes the sound of the heart beat. Finally, he shouts out his confession. (Poe, pg 106) “ I admit the deed!...here, here! --it is the beating of his hideous heart!” The main point is the narrator couldn’t distinguish whether this was reality or his inner thoughts. Only the narrator could hear the heartbeat, therefore this specific reasoning makes him
“True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses . . . How, then, am I mad?” (Poe 39). In this quote, the narrator states multiple times that he is not mad, which leads the reader believe, due to the repetition, that he is in fact off his rocker. “I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. . . It grew quicker and quicker, louder and louder every instant. . . It grew louder, I say, louder every moment” (Poe 43). This short passage from “The Tell Tale Heart” includes the repeating sound of a heart beat. This represents the feelings of the old man, and the anger of the narrator. As the sound grows, the fear of the old man does too, along with the narrator’s anger towards the old
Firstly, at the end of this story, the narrator’s illusions are the most powerful pieces of evidence for his madness. It is his two illusions that betrays him and imposed him to confess the crime. His first illusion is the beating of the old man’s heart which actually did not exist. Initialy, exactly as he portrayed "My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, it continued and became more distinct", the ringing he heard haunted him ceaselessly. Then he "found that the noise was not within his ear", and thought the fancy in his ear was the beating of old man’s heart. Because of the increasing noise, he thought the officers must hear it, too. However, in fact, everything he heard is absurd and illusive. And it proves that the narrator is really insane. Next, his second illusion is the officers’ "hypocritical smiles" which pushed him to completely be out of control. Losting of his mind, he called the officer "Villains". Apparently, he was confused and falsely thought "they were making a mockery of his horror" which irritated him intensively. Consequently, he told all the truth and "admitted the deed" in order to get rid of the growing noise. Therefore, the above two pieces of evidence both reveal the truth that the narrator is absolutely insane in contrary to what the narrator tried to tell us.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” has taken the time to meticulously plot. He sneaks nightly into the old man’s room preparing until he is ready to carry out his plans. His discontent lies...
He explains that his disease makes all his senses and especially his hearing, very sensitive as well as acute. The narrator then informs the readers of the events in his past to prove that he isn’t mad. He tells the readers that he loves the old man and has nothing against him, except the old man’s “pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe). The narrator explains how he hates the evil eye and whishes to kill the old man, so that he could be free from the eye. He goes on to say that for seven nights he would go to the old man’s room and watch him sleep, but on the eighth night, the old man wakes from hearing the narrator enter the room and from the shadows the narrator sees the evil eye prompting him to kill the old man. When the policeman come to the house, the narrator convents them that nothing bad has happened but because he was feeling confident he invites the policeman to the room to chat. All seems well until the narrator starts to hear the beating of a heart and freaks out and confesses that he murdered the old man. The story is littered with creepy symbols, horrific themes, and psychological effects of guilt and sin that embodies the Dark Romantic style shown through the insane nameless narrator who seeks to kill the old man with the evil
In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a man opens up by saying that he will defend his sanity yet confessing that he has killed old man who he takes care of. The police show up and ask him if he knows anything about the screams the old man had made. He tells them no and they believe him. In the end he hears them talking and laughing and assumes that they are mocking him and know that he is lying. He ends up confessing his crime and telling them that the body of the old man is under the floorboards.
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of ridding his life of the man's "Evil Eye" (34). Although afflicted with overriding fear and derangement, the narrator still acts with quasi-allegiance toward the old man; however, his kindness may stem more from protecting himself from suspicion of watching the old man every night than from genuine compassion for the old man.