In "The Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe uses a wide array of literary elements throughout to create a sense of bewilderment, rage and madness through the eyes of the narrator. Through the frequent use of interjection, along with short, choppy sentences, Poe creates a narrator that strikes the reader as mad and nervous, almost schizophrenic in nature. He employs this throughout the story, reinforcing the idea that the narrator is truly insane. Poe also uses some degree of personification and allusion, which is, perhaps, most vividly portrayed when he personifies the narrator as Death incarnate, saying,"Now he knew that Death was standing there." The narrator has taken it upon himself to do the job of Death itself, which highlights superstition of the time by also making an allusion to the entity of Death the character. Later on the narrator calls the white, milky eye of the old man the "Evil Eye". This is also an allusion to a belief at the time, of an eye or gaze that when it looks upon you; you are harmed. Now, the …show more content…
He goes about describing the murder very calmly, and almost as if he is proud of what he did. He states "I smiled as I felt success was near" as he beats the old man to death. He even rejoices when the deed is done, stating "He was dead!... his eye would trouble me no more!" When one considers the deed that was just done, the reader must feel equal parts disgust and horror. The narrator then meticulously describes the way he disposed of the body: "You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. First, I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs....and then I put the pieces of the body under the floorboards." For a reader of the time, this was written they would most likely have recoiled with shock and disgust, and this reaction comes down through the ages to even today's
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...
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
He brutally, relentlessly murdered the old man because of his eye, just his eye and nothing else. The man didn’t do anything bad to him, and there were probably many other ways he could deal with it too. Another example is when he tells the cops he slaughtered the old man. He says, "Villains!" I shrieked, "Dissemble no more!
It is clear to me that the eye is a symbol of evil. In the story the old man states that he doesn't want to kill the old man, as he stated "I love the old man." , however his problem was the 'eye'. The narrator isn't completely sure what is wrong with the eye, however it is represented as almost an entity separate from him. I believe the author chose to create a relationship between the old man's 'eye' and the narrator in order to reveal more about the narrator's character.
Internal conflict is used in this story to show the narrator’s private thoughts and feelings. This literary device can be found in the exposition of the plot. At this point in the story, the narrator carefully plans on assassinating the old man, not because he hated him, in fact, he claims to love him. The narrator begins to describe the elderly man’s “vulture” eye and his inner thoughts as, “He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees – very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”
He killed the old man by suffocating him with a mattress, cutting off his arms and legs in a tub so all the blood would be gone, then hiding the old man’s body parts under the floor. After exterminating the old man he smiled gaily about how well it went. He was so confident about the disposing of the body, when the police came he let the police look around a actually sat on the floorboards where the body was at. The narrator was ecstatic after the old man was dead, he thought he got away with killing the man, the narrator said, “his eye would trouble me no
This, although made intentionally, has become the ultimate case of irony. To elaborate, the narrator does not fail to describe every horrific detail of his evil deed, but refuses to label himself as the villain. As we reach the end of the story, we see that the narrator begins to feel a sense of unease as he believes the old man is still alive. He states, “No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased…
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.
He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees” This quote show you that he hated the old man's eye and just the fact that it existed affected him. The young man ends up killing him in a effort to get rid of the eye but before he killed him, the old man screamed and alerted the
This causes you to go into a story already giving the impression that he is mad. I believe that the narrators insightful insane desire to kill the man was impulsive because of the “disease”. Now weather or not if he had a disease he continues to say he isn’t mad. That obviously tells the reader that he is mad, just will not come to the conclusion that he is. When he finally yells, and fesses up the crime that he committed in the final sentence of the story, I think he finally realizes that something was honestly wrong with him.
He comes to the conclusion that he must kill the old man in order to keep the eye from watching him. So, for seven nights he goes into the old man’s bedroom at midnight to see if the man’s eyes are open. He claims that he cannot kill the old man unless the eye is open because he did not feel threatened by
Finally, he opens the little door of his lamp and allows a little light to shine onto the man, and it lands exactly on the eye. And it says, "at length, a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye." And then the eye is open. "It was open -- wide, wide open -- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it." So he's doesn't see the old man.
While he is looking at the old man outside his room he talks about planning on murdering the old man he also mentions how he cannot see his eye, so he is not driven with anger. One night, as soon as he is able to see the old man's eye he executes his plan to kill the men and that it is the only way he will be able to stop the evil in the old man's eye. "You think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precaution I tool for the concealment of the body," he believes that he is not mad because he is able to hide the body well and leave no trace behind. When he sits down with the police offices right above where he put the body he starts to hear the beating heart of the old man. This causes him to start thinking that everyone can hear the heart beat and he starts to believe the police officers are mocking his crime.
This shows that the narrator is eager to kill the old man because he visit the old man every night, just to see the eye which terrifies him. To add on to the narrator lack of sanity, he decided to kill the old man for his own benefit so he could get rid of his fear. For example, in paragraph 11 it states, “The time had come! I rushed into the room, crying, Die! Die!”
Three elements of literary work that truly sum up the theme of The Tell Tale Heart are setting, character, and language. Through these elements we can easily see how guilt, an emotion, can be more powerful than insanity. Even the most demented criminal has feelings of guilt, if not remorse, for what he has done. This is shown exquisitely in Poe's writing. All three elements were used to their extreme to convey the theme. The balance of the elements is such that some flow into others. It is sometimes hard to distinguish one from another. Poe's usage of these elements shows his mastery not only over the pen, but over the mind as well.