ipl-logo

How Does Poe Create Suspense In A Tell Tale Heart

1247 Words5 Pages

Imagine having someone breaking into your house to watch you as you sleep every night. This is what the main character does in A Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. In this story, the main character despises the old man’s ‘vulture eye’ and wants to kill him because of the anger it has caused him. However, there is always a consequence for doing something that is wrong. On the eighth night that the main character had been watching the old man, the old man had woken up and shrieked in fear of the intruder. This only made the character more mad, which resulted in the old man being killed that night. He chops up the body and hides it under the floorboards, leaving nobody to suspect him of anything. Then, the police come at the call of the neighbor of the old man’s shriek. He calmy invites them in, and is so confident that he is brave enough to sit them down right …show more content…

For example, Poe writes “I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously-cautiously (for the hinges creaked)-I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye” (Poe 90). The repetition causes the reader to wonder why the man is acting so strange, why he has to be so quiet and secretive; therefore, it builds suspense. The repetition in this example shows the reader that the character has to be sneaky and cannot get caught trying to kill the old man. He is trying to ensure that he will not get caught, and that he will succeed in killing him without anyone knowing. He’s making clear how careful and cautious he’s being. Poe then further builds suspense when he writes, “It was open-wide, wide open-and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (Poe 91). He grows mad when he sees that the eye is wide open. The reason why he’s killing the old man is because of how much the eye bothers him. It is suspenseful because the repetition of how the eye appears leaves them anxious to find out what the character will do to the old

Show More
Related
366 Words | 2 Pages

Both exposed by victims thought to be dead, two men from two stories share similarities between their situations. In the stories The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, both narrators realize their acts were wrong, but they did them anyway by rationalizing that they were driven by circumstance. The Tell-Tale Heart is about a man who is disturbed by an old man’s “Vulture eye.” He thinks the only way to rid of this horrid eye is to kill the man. So for seven days, he watches him, and on the eighth he kills him.

Read More
288 Words | 2 Pages

While looking into the mind of a narrator who battles between claiming to be sane while portraying a reality of insanity, readers who have read Edgar Allen Poe's, "The Tell-Tale Heart," have stated the narrator is insane. A closer look shows that he is actually sane by means of nervousness, patience, and murder. The author, Edgar Allen Poe suggests sanity in the narrator by saying, "Why will you say that I am mad? " Throughout the story, the narrator's actions brought forth contempt, showing readers the narrator is attentive of his own surroundings.

Read More
821 Words | 4 Pages

“ The Tell-Tale Heart” Interpretive Essay “He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. ”(Poe, 1843) In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan, a delusional madman plans the death of and innocent old man with an “eye of a vulture” over the course of eight nights. The narrator wanted to kill the old man for only one reason, to get rid of his hideous eye.

Read More
822 Words | 4 Pages

”(Poe, 1843) Despite having entered the victim’s room for 8 nights and planning the kill, the murderer did not plan the exact moment he would strike him until the old man opened his eye. ”It was open-wide,wide open-and I grew more furious as I gazed upon it”(Poe,1843). In that moment, the narrator decided how he would murder the old man without it being schemed. However, while he had not predetermined his method of attack he did know where he would hide the old man’s body after the event.

Read More
519 Words | 3 Pages

The Tell-Tale Heart: The Power of Madness and Obsession The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story that mainly focuses on the narrator and the old man. The narrator is a person who puts an end to the old man by smashing a bed on him. He did this to not see the old man’s vulture eyes on any occasions again. This caused by his own obsession and his uncontrollable turbulent madness.

Read More
346 Words | 2 Pages

Edgar Allen Poe’s story titled “The Tell-Tale Heart” is very well-known for demonstrating what guilt can do to one’s mind. The narrator of the story speaks of living with a man who had never harmed him, yet displayed his eye in a way that drove the narrator insane. The narrator, who remains nameless, gradually expresses his desires of killing the old man in his residence, even though he insists throughout the story that he is not insane. As the tale progresses it is seen that the narrator tries not only to convince himself, but the reader as well that his reason to murder the old man is valid. However, much to his dismay, reality catches up to him.

Read More
1412 Words | 6 Pages

In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator tries to convince the reader that he is not mad by stating that his disease sharpened his senses, which to him meant that he was perfectly fine. Nevertheless, his sharpened senses influenced him that an old man’s eye was a threat to his life, which led him to killing the man, thus ridding himself of the eye forever. However, at the end of the story, his mind begins to wonder about the possibility of getting caught, and when his heart begins to beat faster and louder from guilt, he is convinced

Read More
827 Words | 4 Pages

A man cannot live his life knowing that he has committed a deed that had caused guilt in his mind and his heart. “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a story, and it is about a young adult who is scared not by the Old Man, but by the eye, that the Old Man has. He describes the eye as a vultures eye, and the eye has bothered him a lot. He has tried to kill the man because of his devilish eye, and goes to his house every midnight and tries to kill him, once he did kill the man, he got a knock on the door by the officers who suspected him of killing the man but he slowly rejected that idea, but the guilt of him killing the man ended up swallowing him into misery. “I can stand him no longer” by Raphael Dumas, is a poem about how a man hates another man, so much, that it is driving him insane.

Read More
257 Words | 2 Pages

A short story used to study paranoia and the tragedy of mental deterioration, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” illuminates the psychological contradictions that contribute to the narrator ’s murderous profile. In the early moments of the piece, the narrator adamantly claims that he is not insane; however, his blood lust and obsession with the old man’s eye convince the reader otherwise. To this point, the reader might wonder what sane human being would dismember a helpless, elderly man. In fact, many readers may deem the narrator a sociopath, a man incapable of taking moral responsibility for his crimes.

Read More
1089 Words | 5 Pages

“The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. . . In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him” (Poe 17-18). In his horrific short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe writes about fear and infatuation. Because the nameless narrator fears the old man’s eye, obsession begins to grow with his horror.

Read More
1464 Words | 6 Pages

The narrator feels threatened by the eye because the eye notices his sin. In the text, it points out that Poe was blinded to his own sin. You can see this when you read the quote “… no human eye- not even his could have detected anything wrong” (Poe 44). The narrator refused to see any wrong in himself. This is

Read More
669 Words | 3 Pages

This story contains a thorough amount of symbolism, but one example stood out among the others. In the story, the narrator tales of the old man’s eye bewitching him day and night. An example of this eye is given in the text, ”I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones” (Poe). This eye may very well represent nothing other than the killer's own mind. The dullness represents the numbness the narrator has to killing the innocent man, while the hideous veil could be the insanity that has taken over the afflicted man’s

Read More
1000 Words | 4 Pages

Nonetheless, narrator starts by addressing to the reader that he or she is “nervous… I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe1128), the narrator goes on to tell the reader that he or she well tell a story where he or she will show that the narrator is not crazy yet confess to the killing of an old man. The narrator explain that he or she very much respected the old who had never do the narrator wrong and desired none of his money “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me….

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.

Read More
1433 Words | 6 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, critic and editor. His best work comes from his short stories and poems which made people around the world read his works. One of his best written novels is called “Tell tale heart” and is about a man whom was irritated by a old man’s eye. The man could not bare seeing the old man with his “evil eye”, and therefore thought that the only way of getting rid of it was to kill the old man. When the police later on came to investigate what has happened, the man hears the sound of a beating heart which gets louder in his head for every minute that passes by.

Read More

More about How Does Poe Create Suspense In A Tell Tale Heart

Open Document