How Does Poe Create Tension In The Tell Tale Heart

A vulture eye, a mentally crazed man, 8 nights, and a murder are only the beginning of a twisted story. Edgar Allen Poe is an infamous author who wrote many books incorporating fear and dread. Poe is the author of the short story, The Telltale Heart. The story is about an insane man and his plot to kill an innocent old man. After being driven crazy by the old man’s eye, the narrator conceives a plot to stalk the old man for seven nights and on the eighth night kill him. He succeeds in his plot but only to be caught by police officials. Although Poe specialized in creating fear and dread in his story’s The Telltale Heart successfully terrorized and left an impression in the reader using the characters to portray fear, suspense keeps the reader on their toes, and violence to put a pit in the readers stomach.

The narrator of the story has many ways of creating fear. One way is his voice. The narrator sounds very insane when he speaks. He speaks every word that comes to mind and in some cases when he came across a word he likes he repeated it. The narrator uses repetition in his voice to emphasis often-sinister phrases such as, “(The vulture eye) was open-wide, wide open” (Poe, 304). He uses the repetition of words to create a picture in the readers mind. When he says the eye is wide open the reader can then picture the cloudy, misshapen eye staring back at the reader. He uses this throughout the story emphasizing different phrases and words. Another way the narrator creates fear is his methodical and insane behavior. He stalks the man for seven nights before killing the old man. Each night he would spend hours just opening the door and then another hour opening the lamp. Only an insane person would spend that much time and planning into what they are doing. The narrator tells the reader he is not insane because he stalked the old man for seven nights, or took hours