Poe's Heart

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Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most recognized prose poets, short story authors, and literary composers of all time. His works contain trending themes such as love, time, death and the concept of “oneness.” Poe often expressed these themes according to events that he had experienced, and some of his themes intertwined with others. Take for instance, his love for beauty and perfection played a major role in his concept of oneness, or state of absolute fulfillment. However in his short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe effectively explores the power of guilt, and leads his readers through a cynical plot to murder while enduring the struggle to silence a beating conscience by treading the lines of genius versus insanity, moral reasoning versus indifferent resolution, and meticulousness versus obsession.

The Tell-Tale Heart treads the line of genius versus insanity. Poe begins the story with an introduction from a presumably insane narrator who first greets his audience by reassuring us that he’s not insane at all. “Observe how calmly I can tell you this story,” he begins. He finds genius in his plot to kill an old man with a fogged eye, and the very thought consumes the narrator. The line between genius and insanity was a line Poe treaded throughout many of his works, but especially in The Tell-Tale Heart. According to an analysis of Poe’s works expressed in the novel Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius by Joseph Wood Krutch, it states that “Truth and fiction were with him inextricably mingled, and imagination, being the result of an unconscious effort at psychic adjustment, outside his control. Sometimes, it was so vivid as to constitute an actual hallucination, but being afterwards recognized as such it was written down as a story....

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... generate their own conclusion within a few short pages of text is what establishes him as the “father of short stories.” The imagery provided within the story successfully leaves each reader with a lasting effect, and this is one story that is sure to withstand time due to its universal nature. The Tell-Tale Heart effectively tells a tale that is perceived differently to everyone who reads it.

Works Cited

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: a Study in Genius. New York: Atheneum, 1965. Print.

Poe, Edgar A. "The Philosopy of Composition." Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe (1965): 20-32. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Vol. 54. Timothy Sisler. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Dec. 2011. .

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