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Crescendo In The Tell Tale Heart

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"The Tell Tale Heart" A heartbeat builds to a crescendo in the climax of Edgar Allen Poe's, "The Tell Tale Heart". In this chilling horror the main character cannot tolerate his roommate, especially the eerie look of his vulture eye. Once he conjure the idea to murder his roommate the idea nags at him in such a way that he feels he must watch his roommate sleep for a week and then go through with murdering his roommate. These behaviors are absolutely bizarre and horrific. This makes us curious as to why a person would even think to go through with such action. Edgar Allen Poe uses the narrator's "disease" as the determinant for why he acts, thinks, and behaves so outrageously. One, of the outrageous behaviors that was caused by the …show more content…

"The Tell Tale Heart" states, "I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted( page 8)." He adds, "I foamed- I raved- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased( page 8)." The noise he is referring to was introduced as a "low, dull, quick sound". He also heard a noise quite similar to this during and after killing his roommate, which he believed was his roommate's beating heart. Because he thinks this is some arbitrary noise in this scenario, we can assume that this noise is his heartbeat. Now any sane person would realize this and use methods to calm themselves, as to not be perceived as suspicious. However, it is clear that the narrator's disease has heightened his sense, but not his awareness of self. It would make sense that his heightened senses s why he was so sensitive to his own heartbeat. This is one reason why the disease caused him to confess. Of course, you could correlate his behavior of paleness, foaming and outbursts with symptoms of diseased people in general. Or, relate the disease to insanity and claim his conspiracy theories towards the policemen were insane, and therefore caused by the disease. You see, there are many reasons why this outrageous behavior was caused by the disease. To clarify, his confession is outrageous because of how confident he was in his success, and his perspective on the police and his heartbeat. Anyways, it is obvious to see that the outrageous behavior of his confession was caused by the

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I sat, and while I answered cheerily. they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distant:-----it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness--until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears."

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He describes it, as “...a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I know that sounds good, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart.” This further proves that the narrator is mentally ill, he thinks that he can hear the old man's heartbeat. He heard it once again after he had dismembered the man and put him under the floorboards, he says, “It was a low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in

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