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Comparing The Raven And Tell-Tale Heart

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Edgar Allen Poe was a strange man, who wrote strange stories. Two of his most popular works include “The Raven” and “Tell-Tale Heart.” “Tell-Tale Heart” is about someone, whose gender we don’t know, hating another man’s eye so much he had to kill him. “The Raven” is about a man who thinks he hears a raven that has something to do with his dead wife Lenore. Of those two works, “Tell-Tale Heart is better because of the narrator’s state of mind, literary elements, and figurative language. Firstly, “Tell-Tale Heart” is better because of the narrator’s state of mind. The narrator is portrayed as insane, considering his actions gave him that image. For example, in paragraph two he says, “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and …show more content…

One of the literary elements used in the short story is imagery. Imagery is using words that create a picture in the reader’s mind. Poe wrote, “A new anxiety seized me.”(para 10) These five words create so much imagery. These words tell me how scared he was to get caught. The thought of the old man seeing him frightening him so much, it actually seized his body, caused his heart to skip a beat, and made all of his muscles tighten. Another example would be,”whole hour I did not move a muscle”(para 5). The narrator once again, is so scared about getting caught that he froze his already tightened muscles in a successful attempt to stay still so he wouldn’t be heard. Poe made a movie in my mind. I could see the narrator hunched over, with his nerves bubbling out from within him. This imagery created suspense because you weren't sure what was going to happening next. “Tell-Tale Heart” also had literary elements such as irony. An example of irony in the short story is,”I was never nicer to the old man than the week before I killed him.”(para 2) This an example of situational irony. Situational irony is when what happens is opposite of what we expected. This is situational irony because you would expect he would be mean to the old man if he was about to kill the man. “Tell-Tale Heart is better because of literary

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