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Reality And Perception In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

743 Words3 Pages

In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe writes it so it is difficult to figure out if the person is insane or incredibly intelligent and just went mad. The perception is based whomever is reading the story and their past experiences. The reality is what actually happened. Poe is trying to say that reality and perception can be different from one another. At the start of the story Poe begins by saying “The disease has sharpened my senses- not destroyed them-not dulled them. Above all my sense of hearing acute (Poe 1).” Although in reality his senses have been damaged he is perceiving them as being better than before. This is not what a normal person would think so the reader must come to the conclusion that he is “mad” no sane …show more content…

They are playing a game of cat and mouse. It is hard to believe that Poe was so quiet that he could not be heard. The old man heard him even though in Poe’s mind he was not making a sound this is probably because of his disease that affected his sensory perception. “So I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily. I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" (Poe 25).” The old man hears him and calls him out because he is now about to be caught but Poe decides to kill the man. He finally sees “the vulture eye” open, it is possible that it is what he wanted to see so he believed he saw it open because he wanted to kill him so badly but in reality his eyes were still closed. “It was the beating of the old man's heart (Poe 46).” He believes to be hearing the old man’s heart and it become louder and louder it can be possible that he mistook this and it was his own heart that was racing not the old man. For it is quite impossible to hear someone’s beating heart across the room. Poe also goes on to say that he had anxiety, with anxiety comes increased blood output and increased heart rate so it was his own heart he was hearing not the old

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