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The tell tale heart by edgar allan poe critical essay
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“The Tell-Tale Heart” vs. “The Black Cat” “I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.” This quote from Edgar Allan Poe portrays the plot in both “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” precisely. Both of these tales bring you into the mind of two fascinating narrators. These ghastly short stories written by Poe in the 1840’s are quite different, but they share striking similarities. “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are similar in several ways.
“The Black Cat” & “The Tell Tale Heart” Edgar Allan Poe’s well known short story, “The Black Cat” is a story about an alcoholic man with violent tendencies. He tortures, and ultimately kills, his beloved cat. His new cat drives him even more crazy and in the end he ends up killing his wife out of anger. In another work, “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator kills an old man.
In the short stories The Tell-Tale Heart and the Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, there are many similarities, but not many differences. Both stories have Poe’s gothic and depressing touch to each story, having a sense of darkness and remorse. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe, before killing the old man, said “I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart(page 2)”. Poe knew what he was doing and still did it anyway. In “The Black Cat”, after he had killed the black cat, he showed a sense of brokenness.
When she died, Edgar felt that overwhelming sense of guilt once again. It was through these instances in which guilt would stick with Edgar while writing stories. There are three very stories in which a reader can see Edgar’s theme of guilt. Such stories include “The Oval Portrait,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell Tale Heart.” In the April of 1842, Edgar Allan Poe published a short story titled “The Oval Portrait.”
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.
"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity" "There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell." -Edgar Allan Poe A man whose life is still veiled in mystery even 150 years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe, the father of horror and gothic writing, is a man that truly understands the meaning of tragedy and madness. Poe lived a life of continuous misfortunes, and in his writings he expresses a darker view on humanity, one example would be in his short story "The Tell-Tale Heart", a story about a man that desperately tries to convince the reader that he is a sane man, despite the egregious story he proceeds to tell; he goes on by walking you through the time he killed an old, innocent man.
The tell-tale of a sane but crazy heart. Insane, sane, or maybe just very odd. That is for the reader to decide. The Tell-Tale Heart story takes a look into the mind of a man who executes the plan of killing an old man because of his eye. The unnamed narrator’s ability to understand fantasy from reality when hiding the body to not get caught and manage all his personal affairs in his life like when he continued to maintain the friendship with the old man even when he wanted to kill him, proves he is sane.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” are two short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe that parallel his actual feelings and flaws in life. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat,” the protagonist is under the influence of alcohol dependency, which symbolizes his drinking problem in his life, and the protagonist is caught committing murder, symbolizing death in his life. The protagonist mentioned those flaws and sorrows because he wants readers to understand why he wrote those stories. Therefore, Edgar Allan Poe’s protagonists in his stories share his flaws. His habitual intoxication led to his dark writing with murder’s consequences; thus reflecting the inner working of Poe’s murderous mind.
Some of the most known poems from Poe are a part of the Gothic fiction genre. His stories such The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat illustrate dark themes such as insanity and loss of the senses that leads into a dark chaos. Moreover, as Poe wrote his stories and poems, it led to people getting ideas from him and creating their own writings with dark themes. The Tell-Tale Heart is about an unnamed narrator whose insanity led him to kill an old man and lead to his mind destroying himself, who later admits his murder to the police because he could not take the dead
How credible could the story of a deranged person be? The fact that Poe wrote this story as a narrative makes it more credible. As far as we know the narrator is telling the story as he/ she knows it. It is evident that the narrator is hinged he frequently restates that he is not mad.
Edgar Allan Poe uses description to cast certain emotions to his audience. Within his descriptions, he perfectly picks words to strike horror or lift the lowest of spirits. Through his writing, Poe has become one who will never be forgotten. He will always be remembered as one of the pivotal writers in the romantic period of writing. In his works “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Raven”, and “Tell-Tale Heart”, he strategically describes people, events, and places for his readers to feel the full effect and emotion he wants.
Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is at first, a seemingly dark and morbid story, but on closer inspection, it actually highlights some of the better aspects of human nature, such as the innate uniqueness of their ideologies, their sense of purpose, and their moral way of thinking. A constant theme throughout the story was the main character’s unique ideology and view of the world relating to said ideology. This is shown most clearly when he breaks down during the visit from the policemen: “And still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled… they were making a mockery of my horror!” [Poe, 3]. The protagonist’s individualistic point of view depicts an obviously pleasant, normal situation in a very different light.
Literary Essay “‘Cuz sometimes to stay alive you gotta kill your mind.” These descriptive lyrics from the song Migraine, written by the modern day band Twenty Øne Pilots, tells that the thoughts in one’s mind can make it hard to stay alive, or function as one should. According to the song, in order to keep from emotional harm, one must fight the negative thoughts and emotions. A situation like the one illustrated in the lyrics from Migraine is displayed through a not so modern character. This character is the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”.
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most prolific writers of the 19th century, and many of his famous works such as The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven, The Black Cat, and many more. One of the forefathers of gothic literature or dark romanticism. Poe, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, lived a tragic life and his works speak to it. Tell-Tale Heart is a story of irony and about how madness can quickly consume someone, but its guilt will always come back to haunt those actions. At the start of the story, the narrator addresses the reader that his actions were not driven by madness but were methodical and precise.
In literature many works follow the plot diagram format. This includes, the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution. We as readers learn this in the beginning of our education and follow it in the stories we write. The quote by T. Melos, "Every work of literature leads up to one great moment of insight, one instant in which the truth stands revealed" shows that every piece of literature has a climax, or the turning point of a story. For many readers the climax is the most interesting part of the story.
