The Theme Of Guilt In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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This essay will be over these Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe but we are just focusing The Tell Tale Heart, The Black Cat, and The Gold Bug. The commonly accuring themes in these tales are guilt which gets them all in trouble. In these stories they either are overconfident that they got away with things that gets them in trouble too. Mainly, the guilt got the The Tell Tale Heart, guilt will always convince you to tell you the truth and if you couldn’t take what you have done then you shouldn’t have done it. Being guilty about something will drive you insane or mad. Why can’t they just be happy with what they already have? If being would learn from some of these stories the guilt that you would have if you did this maybe we would have less in prison. …show more content…

In The Tell Tale Heart, the man hears the heartbeat of the old man under the floorboards but you know the man is dead. The guilt made the narrator hear the heartbeat which was probably was his own. “Villains! I shrieked, dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-it is the beating of his hideous heart!”(pg. 9). In this quote he can’t take the guilt of killing the old man anymore. Guilt was the main thing in this passage because if he had not felt guilty about killing the man he would have got away with

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