Alliteration In The Tell Tale Heart

In the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator of the story wanted to murder the old man. Edgar Allan Poe reveals that the character’s reason to kill the old man was not due to passion, objection, and gold; he loved the old man and the old man did not insult him; however, Poe writes that the old man had one eye that, “… resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with film over it.” Whenever the eye looked at the character, Poe acknowledged, “… 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.” The narrator waited a whole week to kill the old man in order to watch him as he sleeps and to see what the narrator has to do

Around four o’clock the police showed up to his door and after some time, the guilt ran through the narrator’s head and he confessed what he did to the old man. One literary device that can be identified in this short story is repetition amongst words and phrases. Repetition comes in forms of alliteration, which is the repetition of initial consonant; assonance, which is repetition of the vowel sound; consonance, which is the repetition of an internal consonant; and lastly anaphora, which is the repetition of the same word or phrase. Anaphora is used throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart” to intensify the moment and add suspense to the reading. Furthermore, the repeated words are emphasized to describe the condition the character might be have been under, for example, Poe writes, “… cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—very, very, slowly, so that I might not disturb the man’s sleep.” Another example was “ And now—have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low (“The Tell-Tale