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Obligatory Elements In Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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Gothic literature is a blend of horror and romance. The genre of gothic novels has been around for centuries, and therefore can be seen as indispensable in the literature world. Due to the dark sides and supernatural occurrences in these kind of books, reading these story can be quiet thrilling. The question that easily can cross our mind is what are the significant elements, so obligatory elements in order to create a gothic atmosphere? For this purpose, Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” will be analyzed, as well as the use of Gothic motives. The genre Gothic became one of the most popular ones in the late 18th and early 19th century. At the very beginning Gothic literature was not considered a serious issue. After becoming …show more content…

A. Poe was also fascinated by writing about dark issues and considered different Gothic motifs in a psychological way. He was attracted by fear as an element in his stories. “In his hands Gothic was becoming ‘horror’, a term properly applied to the most famous late-Victorian example of Gothic.” (Mullan 2014) Taking a look at Poe’s personal story of life, he might needed some space to assimilate his hard times. As he studied at the University of Virginia, he joined the military service and married his cousin. After her death, Poe was alone and died in 1849. It can be assumed, that the mental illness of the narrator reflects the issues of the author. It is also possible that it was written from a personal perspective (Bullis p.5). The narrator, who directly tells the reader that he was nervous, insists on that he is not mad. He relates to a story of an old man whom he dearly loves. The eye of this man observes him and he considers to kill this man in order to destroy his eye. Some nights pass by until the old man is finally awake at night and the “eye of a vulture” is haunting the narrator again. He chokes the scared man because of a loud scream. Afterwards the police comes and scans the apartment. The “narrative I” is unwounded and they sit down in the room where the murder just happened. After a while, he hears a noise that no one else seems to recognize until he goes crazy and admits his depravation (Poe

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Various gothic elements are depicted by the following gothic writers: Washington Irving, Richard Matheson and Edgar Allan Poe; elements such as: entrapment and supernatural characteristics are illustrated in the short stories: “The Devil and Tom Walker;” “Prey;” and “The Raven.” Entrapment was a significant element represented in all of the short stories aforementioned. In, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” soon after Tom Walker established his broker’s shop in Boston “he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it”(Irving 326).

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“ The Tell-Tale Heart” Interpretive Essay Is the complex character created by Edgar Allan Poe a calculated killer or a delusional madman. In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character has a mental condition which causes him to kill a neighbor. He believes that his neighbor has a “vulture eye” which is the reason why he killed him. Night after night, he watches the man and plans how to kill him. Then one night, he puts his plan into action.

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The Style of Poe Analysis In “The Tell-tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the demented, arrogant and dark tones reflect the man’s guilt and insanity that eventually leds him to admit to the crime he committed. Poe’s diction heightens the arrogant tones which is seen as the man plans the murder and carries it out in a careful, organized way. He goes “boldly” into the chamber, “cunningly” sticks his head in the doorway and feels “the extent of his own power”. Poe’s use of diction shows how cocky the man actually is.

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In the early to mid 1800s, there lived a man who experienced copious amounts of unfortunate events. His parents dying before he was three years old, his being separated from his remaining family at a young age, and his wife dying at the age of 25 from Tuberculosis, Edgar Allan Poe had endured many hardships which he later used as inspiration in his works (Poets). In his tales, it is obvious he uses his own feelings of loneliness and anguish to make the reader experience a sense of his own depression as they are reading. Edgar Allan Poe, with the adoption of labyrinthine word choice and the motifs of death and decay, develops truly ominous tones in his prose and poetry. Poe manages to create entire stories with words of dark and horrific

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Gathering all the evidence, I believe that Edgar Allan Poe was a victim of schizophrenia. Although no one can be sure, considering no one was able to diagnose him, the symptoms do add up. Without all of our medical advances, no one can imagine what Poe went through his life. He may have let his feelings and thoughts flow into his numerous pieces of writing. Whether his feelings and emotions flowed into his writing, or he purposely wrote his stories like that, which would make him an even better writer.

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Edgar Allan Poe is known as one of the greatest gothic writers of his time. Despite this though, many thought him to be a bit mad because of his bipolar disorder. He alternated between periods of extreme creativity and depression, eventually taking out his depression in his writing, creating his unique writing style. Some also thought he believed he was torn between two existences, due to the fact that he often wrote about a “double self.” It is even rumored that when his wife died, he spent his nights walking around her grave.

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In any novel, mystery and suspense is a popular characteristic, but contributes very well to what secures a gothic theme to a novel. Here, mystery and suspense are built throughout the novel based on the predicament of the characters. Initially, mystery is built very early on in the story, where the reader is interested to know who the

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Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.

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“The Gothic” English Literature helps the world escape reality. English Literature can be Funny, Scary, Serious or Factual. But Is Gothic Literature a big part of English Literature? Now some people hate the Gothic Genre and never want to take a chance and leave certain Genres to read it. But the Desire to be terrified is as much part of Human Nature as the need to Laugh (“The Gothic Novel”

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Though Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories like, The Cask of Amontillado, to his poems like, The Raven, Poe’s shows his writing style to use physical imagery and connotative syntax to show ,imagery in his writing. Throughout his life, Poe had always lived through the most chaotic and evil of time. His parents died while he was 3 years old. After his parents died, he lived with another family member who never accepted him as their own son. Later on in life, Poe had served in the military and at that point he started writing poems.

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In this paper we are going to explain the gothic theme “the double” and others topics of the Gothic Literature. We are going to work with two stories, the first one “William Wilson” by Edgar Allan Poe, and the other one “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story by Edgar Allan Poe was first published in 1839 in the Burton 's Gentleman 's Magazine, and the one by R.L. Stenvenson was first published in 1886. We will analyse these works within the category of Gothic literature, highlighting the mains characteristics evidenced into the text. Gothic literature was created as a way to satisfy the concerns of the people who were dissatisfied with the ruling order, wanting to experience forbidden sensations and escape the daily routine.

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Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.

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Its fictional world gives form to amorphous fears and impulses common to all mankind, using an amalgam of materials, some torn from the author’s own subconscious mind and some stuff of myth, folklore, fairy tale, and romance. It conjures up beings - mad monks, vampires, and demons ... Gothic fiction gives shape to concepts of the place of evil in the human mind

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Edgar Allan Poe was an American author; he mainly focused in genres such as short stories and poems. Poe didn’t have much of an academic background in literature but, he excelled in it. Some people believe that his success was mostly due to the fact that his life was very sad, filled by a series on misfortunate events, such as being an orphan, suffering from poverty and being constantly surrounded by death. In his works, Poe portrays narratives that are characterized by their mystery and macabre. The topic of death was ever present in his work, constantly describe with dark moods and somewhat terrifying settings.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are dark and mysterious. In the story “Tell-Tale Heart” he used the literary device of setting to create a threatning and scary mood. The elements he used were mood and atmosphere,geography,Time of day and elapsed time. One of the most important elements of setting in this story is mood and atmosphere. This was important because of the lighting.

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