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Examples Of Irony In The Tell Tale Heart

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The Tell-Tale Heart Darkness enveloped the petite police room. With the black curtains draped over the windowsills, a faint shivering and shaking shadow is in the center of the cold room. Faint mumbles of “louder,louder,louder” and “not mad...not mad” is heard from the area. Once the metal door leading to the police room closes, all that was heard was the faint scream from the shadow. In Edgar Allen Poe’s spine chiller story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator discovers that his neighbor, an old man, has an “Evil Eye”. When the narrator discovers about his eye, his blood runs cold and is unable to rest without thinking about the eye. What will he do about it? Is there a way for him to rid of the eye forever, or is it impossible? Poe’s use …show more content…

He used three types of irony-verbal, situational, and dramatic irony-throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The first type of irony he used was verbal irony. Verbal irony occurs when we say just the opposite of what we mean. An example of verbal irony is on page 354 and the passage says, “Harken! and observe how healthily-how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” However, in reality, the narrator is not calm and is clearly mentally unstable as he is speaking about his story. Another type of irony is situational irony. Situational irony occurs when what happens is different from what we expect. On page 355, the following says, “ …(for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers)...” What’s ironic in this passage is that the only bad person in the household is among the old man. The narrator is actually, inside his house, ready to murder him. The last type of irony is dramatic irony. Dramatic irony occurs when we know something a character doesn’t know. “I smiled-for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome,” on page 368, is an example of dramatic irony. This is dramatic irony because later on in the story, the narrator then tells the officers that he committed the murder. Even though Poe’s use of irony builds up the thriller in the story, there are other elements he uses to build even more of it in the story. For example, he uses figurative

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