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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe

Image result for tell tale heart

Share your literary essay with the rest of the students that chose this short story.  Take some time to read 2 or 3 other essays.  Comment on them.  Your comment should be about something you noticed them doing well from our lessons.  For example, "You did a really good job explaining your evidence.

3 comments:

  1. “Tell Tale Heart '' by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story narrated by a mentally ill man. He tells us readers about an old man, who he claimed to love, with the eye of a vulture. This eye drives him crazy! Although he loves the old man, he decides he must kill the eye, which also means killing the man. Shortly after his decision, he takes us through seven nights of staring at the eye. But, on his eighth night, the old man awakens while he is watching. He believed this must be time to kill him. But, after he kills the old man, our narrator runs into trouble when the police come to investigate a worry about him. After a while, he loses his mind over the killing and confesses to the police. The author uses this to teach us about honesty; honesty is doing the right thing.


    To begin the story, our narrator lies about having control over his mind. “I have been ill, very ill. But why do you say I have lost control over my mind…” The author uses this quote to lead the readers to how ill he really is. This quote could lead us to a theme of mental illness, but clearly this shows him not being honest. Instead of telling the truth, he then lies to the readers about the state of his mind. When trying to cover up his problem, he puts a spotlight on it instead.


    Within the climax of the story, the main character kills the old man. “He was dead!” This begins the train of lies, and soon the honesty of the narrator to the policemen. It all starts with the man hiding the body under the old man’s floorboards. When the policemen come to the house, the man invites them in, and shows them around. He isn’t nervous, but surprisingly calm. At the end of the search he brings them in the old man’s room to talk. While talking, he hears a loud sound. It grows louder and louder. He soon realizes it’s the old man’s heartbeat. He can’t handle the heartbeat anymore and finally states, “I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?!”


    This quote can represent how our characters show the author’s lesson of honesty. Our main character, as previously stated, has lied about losing his mind, killing the man, and then confessing and telling the truth. The author of this story wants their readers to know that lying isn’t healthy, and being honest can make you feel so much better.


    Throughout the story, Edgar Allan Poe used imagery and figurative language to bring the lesson of honesty to life. The largest amount of figurative language used was repetition. When explaining the old man’s vulture eye, he used the phrase “the eye” five times in three sentences! This means that Edgar thought ‘the eye’ was really important. Looking back on those three sentences after finishing the short story, I can really see how this affects the plot. This old man’s eye is the only reason the man kills him. He even said he loved that old man. But, he felt he needed to get rid of, “that eye.”


    Now, if imagery wasn’t used in the story, it wouldn’t have made the reader’s feel the way they did when reading it. Edgar used such descriptive words to describe the events that you almost believed you’re watching from inside the old man’s room. One example states, “I could hear a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall.” This is a description of a heartbeat. It’s almost as if you’re watching a movie opposed to reading some short story.


    At the end of the story, we are left with the main character finally being honest about killing the old man. That moment makes you wonder what happens to the man after confessing, and hope he’ll get the help he needs. Honesty can take time, and it can be difficult. But, Edgar Allan Poe shows in his short story of “Tell Tale Heart”, that honesty is doing the right thing.

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  2. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, is a short story that is in a point of view from a man that is mentally ill. The narrator knew an old man that had one eye, which ”was like the eye of a vulture”, according to him. He liked the old man, but he did not like the old man’s eye, not at all. Infact, he decided to kill the old man just because of his eye. He was creeped out by the “vulture eye” so much that when the old man looked at him, he said, “a cold feeling went up and down my back…” He waited and waited for nights to kill the old man, because he would only kill him if he was awake, if the eye was open and awake. On the eighth night, the old man was killed, and he let out a scream while he cried. With this in mind, the police came to his door. The narrator said, “I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body down there.” He hid the body underneath the floorboards, but he was not scared and he was good at lying to the police. However, when the police were talking to him, he heard a sound. He continued to talk, but the sound got louder and louder. He tried to talk louder to cover up the sounds that he heard; a heartbeat, but that didn’t work. He was going insane and suffering, meanwhile the police didn’t hear a thing. At last, he confessed and said, “‘Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up at the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?!’” The man was truly going insane. The author uses this to teach us lessons about the truth; the truth will always come out.


    “But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind…” The mentally-ill narrator states, “Can you not see that I have full control of my mind?” The repetition here shows that this part of the story is important. The narrator thinks he is sane when he wants to kill the old man. He thinks it’s not a big deal. This reveals that he is in fact, ill and he does not realize it. The repetition shows how he is not honest with himself and how that makes him insane. Later, the truth comes out because he is not mentally stable.


    The narrator also uses imagery to help us visualize the murder. He states, “First I cut off the head, then the arms and the leg...not let a single drop of blood fall on the floor.” He tells us these details and they are important, because they help us picture what is going on. These details are referred to at the end of the story when the truth comes out. He said, “I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body there.” All of this could have been avoided if the narrator just admitted that he was mentally ill. Certainly, the quote “But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind…” could be seen as a theme of mental-illness, but clearly it is showing the narrator not being honest with himself, which later moves the truth along.


    The narrator’s mind is so powerful that when he’s in the old man’s bedroom, he thinks he can hear noises that aren’t really there. He thinks he hears the old man’s heartbeat, but the old man is dead. All of these combinations of sounds are in his head. His mind is playing tricks and his subconscious is telling him there is noise, that there is a heartbeat, and that other people can hear it, but can they? No, they can’t but he is the one that has to admit it. “I talked still faster and louder. And the sound, too, became louder.” He repeats this because it is important to the story. It shows that his mind is making him hear loud, loud noises, possibly noises of guilt.

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  3. (Part 2)

    “Louder, louder… I talked louder. And still the men sat and talked and smiled.“ The policemen couldn’t hear the noise, but the narrator believed they could. He thought they were “...playing a game…” Then, the narrator finally confessed after not being able to take the excruciating noise. That’s when he said, “‘Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?’” The lesson of truth in the story is the truth always comes out. He couldn’t hold it in, the guilt, his mentally-ill mind, all of it, it was all a factor for him to turn himself in: to tell the truth.


    This story took place at the old man’s home. The narrator didn’t kill the old man for a reward, or something heartless like that. In all honesty, he liked the old man. He said, “I did not hate the old man; I even loved him.” He also said, “I did not want his money. I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of a vulture…” The narrator was purely just afraid of his vulture eye. He was honest with himself about that, he was sure of it. He was telling the truth on why he wants to kill the old man. He lies to himself about now he says he is sane, but the truth always has a way of coming out. He learns the guilt of his lies and deserves his consequences.


    When the narrator kills the old man, he buries him underneath 3 floor boards. However, when the police came and started chatting with the narrator, that’s when the noise came over his mind. He couldn’t hear anything but the noise. “I pushed my chair across the floor to make more noise, to cover up that terrible sound.” However, that didn’t work. His insane mind could hear the old man’s heartbeat. It knew that the old man was under the ground he was standing on, and he confessed!

    In conclusion, as Allen Poe wrote the confession scene, he made this scene speak to the readers. This spot especially helped readers find the theme. It shows when the narrator comes clean to himself and to the police. Surely, he thought he still heard the noise. Indeed, he did hear it, because his mind could hear the heart continue to beat. The narrator shouted, “...But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?” This part shows that your truths, good or bad, will come out if you like it or not.

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