Tell Tale Heart Setting Analysis

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In the short story “Tell Tale Heart” Edgar Allan Poe uses different literary devices of setting to create a dark and threatening tone. He uses the following literary devices, mood and atmosphere, geography, elapsed time and time of day. One of the most essential literary devices of setting that Poe used was mood and atmosphere. In the story there are only two characters, which creates suspicion throughout the story. Not only suspicion but tension between the two characters. The lighting of the story was always dark and spooky because the story took place during the night, which also contributes to the mood and atmosphere of the story (538:2). Another element that is part of the mood and atmosphere of the story is the bedroom, where …show more content…

In the story Poe uses the bedroom as the main location, where the evil man who wanted to kill the innocent man would peak through his bedroom door and watch him every night, also the wicked man killed the good man in that same bedroom (238:2). Throughout the story there were no signs of animalife or plant life which creates a dark tone to the story (541:4). Also when the wicked man killed the guiltless man, he cut the man's arms and legs off and hid them under the planks from the flooring between the scantlings or the small beams of wooden floor (541:1 and 2). The story also used another literary device of setting, elapsed time and time of day. A clue that tells you the time of day is on page 538 on paragraph 2 which tells you that the shameless man was pleasant during the day and evil during the night. He watched on the man for a whole entire week every night and made sure that he was fast asleep (538:2 and 3). The story mentioned that the hours would pass during night, and the insane man would stay watching the old man all night long while he waited for the day to come for him to kill the man(?). As you can see Edgar Allen Poe used different literary devices of setting in his short story “Tell Tale Heart” and created a dark and threatening tone, which makes you feel scared and

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