Similes In The Tell Tale Heart

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story about a mentally-ill unnamed narrator who tries to prove he is not insane after murdering an old man because of his villainous eye. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Allan Poe often uses repetition and similes to describe the frightening old man’s eye and to effectively develop the experience of the narrator committing the crime. Allan Poe first recalls that the old man’s heartbeat “grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant...it grew louder, I say louder every moment!” (Poe 2). The repetition of the words “louder” and “quicker” intensify the moment for the reader, strongly illustrate how nervous the narrator truly was listening to the old man’s heartbeat, and heightens the