Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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Edgar Allen Poe creates an atmosphere of fear and dread in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the narrator and the old man. One of the ways Poe creates a dreadful atmosphere is through the psychotic narrator. The narrator is crazy just from the way he talks and the things he says. He talks about how he is not crazy, but explains his actions in a psychotic way: “I heard all things in heaven and in earth. I have heard many things in hell” (Poe 1). This is significant because only somebody that is crazy would say that they can hear extraordinary things like heaven and hell. The purpose for Poe having the narrator say that he can hear impossible things is to create some uncanny feelings towards the narrator. It can give that feeling