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Tell Tale Mind Analysis

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The terms mental stability and psychotic only cut the surface of the characters in William Faulkner’s and Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories. The human mind is a powerful force; not seen by the naked eye that drives people to greatness or their worst downfalls. In tragedy, the mind can transport a person to an alternate reality that they have no control over. Emily, Faulkner’s main character in “A Rose for Emily” is no exception. The townspeople describe the Grierson family as people who live above their means. The Grierson’s see themselves above others and Emily’s father was to blame for her unmarried/childless life. The reader can see a glimpse into Emily’s mind twice. The first after her father’s death and again at the end of the work when …show more content…

Poe’s character in “Tell-Tale Heart” offers an opportunity to see a mind that lives in an alternate state with only a few minor glimpses into reality. Poe shows a man fighting within himself for his own sanity and loses to paranoia. Emily and Poe’s character’s personal transformation takes them from reality to an alternate state of mind; where they lose their identities.
The power of words can steal the reality of another’s mind. In the beginning of the work Emily is a heartbroken daddy’s girl and in the end, she winds up sleeping with a corpse. The tone of “A Rose for Emily” is gossip and great sadness. The townspeople tell us about Emily’s life. There is no way to know the truth. All one can do is draw conclusions. During one point in the story the townspeople talk of Emily and Homer being unmarried and riding around town in a carriage and how inappropriate this was of her. The townspeople reach out to Emily’s family whom she has no contact with, to speak on their behalf. Then, when Emily purchases a men’s nightgown; they assume she married and are happy for her. Emily …show more content…

Arrogance is that of an exaggeration of one’s own abilities or conceited. He believes he is well by ignoring the symptoms and spinning them in a manner to prove they have improved his state of mind. The tone is excitable due to his mental illness and the structure of the work and suspenseful because he leaves you hanging on every line. What will he do/say next? Poe offers a look into a sick man’s mind. How he planned it. Why (over an eye)? How he did it. Even the manner of which he took disposing of the old man’s body in a crude/ inhumane way. Then seeing his guilt overtake what was left of him. Poe reaches his audience on a darker personal level; going into the depths of the unknown: the power of the human mind and mental illness. In the first few lines, Poe’s character is trying to convince the reader that he is sane and his disease has not taken over his mind, but rather improved it. He has not quite come to terms with his illness, still in the denial stage. “The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.” (Poe 37) “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth,” with this he loses all credit to a healthy mental state (Poe 37). First, he is attempting to convince you that killing the old man was what he had to do. He is not mad. He had no choice. The man had an eye of a vulture. That eye became a trigger for this character. One

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Mr. Grierson, Emily’s father, prohibited her from socializing with men because, in Mr. Grierson’s eyes, there was no man suitable for Emily. After being tired of being alone for so long, Emily decided to date Homer Barron. Homer Barron was a Northerner and worked as a foreman for a construction company. The older folks of the town were excited for Emily, there was even talk about marriage between the couple. However, the younger crowd did not believe Homer was that of Ms. Griersons high status.

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Edgar Allen Poe and Rey Bradbury were known for dealing with suspense in their stories. Even though their styles are similar, they lived in drastically different places and time periods. Edgar Allen Poe was discovered as an author in Baltimore Maryland, and he was born in 1809. Rey Bradbury lived most of his life in Los Angeles, and was born in the 1920’s. These two writers are well known for their specific writing genres.

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Both Emily and Robert are prematurely judged by the narrators in both stories, and the assumptions are so far fetched from the reality. Miss. Emily is perceived to be a lonely old woman, whom nobody ever spoke with. Since they never talk with her or learn anything about what is going on in her life, the townspeople begin to gossip to make up for this. They knew her father had driven away any man from becoming close to her, and they just thought to themselves, “ poor Emily” (32).

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The story begins with the narrator admitting that he is a "very dreadfully nervous" type. This type is found throughout all of Poe 's fiction, particularly in the over-wrought, hyper-sensitive Roderick Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher. " As with Usher, the narrator here believes that his nervousness has "sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them." Thus, he begins by stating that he is not mad, yet he will continue his story and will reveal not only that he is mad, but that he is terribly mad. His sensitivities allow him to hear and sense things in heaven, hell, and on earth that other people are not even aware of.

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844 Words | 4 Pages

American author Edgar Allen Poe illustrates how an individual’s internal chaos and anxiety can drive him insane. It is emotional narrative using pathos where Poe tells a dark murderous story through vivid characters, a puzzling plot and a setting that I found unique. First, the portrayal of the characters plays a fundamental role in the creation of the plot, without strong characters, the ideas might appear simple. Poe creates vivid characters which effectively assist the construction of the plot and ideas.

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506 Words | 3 Pages

Miss Emily Grierson, the main character in William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily”, is a very unusual character. She has an extremely unhealthy relationship with her father causing her to deny his death. Miss Emily constantly staying locked up in the house she grew up in alone, feeling forced to live in the limelight of her father and never attempting to get over his death causes her to mentally and physically withered away and become a sad, pitiful, and bizarre human being. Faulkner describes Emily’s desire to be alone by saying, “People hardly saw her at all” (Faulkner II). The only times she was seen was sitting in the window “with the torso of an idol”

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(paragraph 2) This shows how the man was kind to him, Poe even loved the old man but still wanted nothing to do with him because he didn’t like the way his eye looked. “True! -- nervous

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The narrator makes judgments both for and against Miss Emily, and also presents outside observations — particularly in Section IV, when we first learn many details about her. At the beginning of the story, the narrator seems young, is easily influenced, and is very impressed by Miss Emily's arrogant, aristocratic existence; later, in Section IV, this person seems as old as Miss Emily and has related all the important things Miss Emily has done during her lifetime; and by the story's end, the narrator, having grown old with her, is presenting her with a "rose" by sympathetically and compassionately telling her bizarre and macabre

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419 Words | 2 Pages

Modern artists today generally use images of physical and mental illness in literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, both short stories show the usage of illness, madness, and fear. The narrators in both stories try to convince the readers that the characters are physically and mentally ill. Edgar Allen Poe creates these vivid characters which successfully assist the building of plot and ideas. Poe demonstrates how a person’s inner turmoil and terror can lead to insanity through illustrative language.

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1243 Words | 5 Pages

(Poe 1). He appears to be a anxious person by the way he often repeats himself, and the way he explains his thoughts. He frequently stresses the reader that he is not insane. The narrator claims to have a disease, which sharpened his senses, more specifically his hearing, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.”

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806 Words | 4 Pages

“We remembered all the young men her father had driven away” (453). Miss Emily’s father drove away young men interested in her, not allowing her to have a love life and therefore a life outside of him. This controlling treatment of Miss Emily by Mr. Grierson coincides with Emily’s fight to control her love life with Homer. “Because Homer himself had remarked - he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club - that he was not a marrying man” (454). If it weren’t for the fact that Miss Emily murdered Homer, he would have left her, therefore she used the murder as a way to keep him close to

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1141 Words | 5 Pages

I. To begin with, we will analyze section one and learn some background information. In the A Rose for Emily, the narrator is recalling Emily’s funeral by saying “…when Miss Emily Grierson died our whole town went to the funeral…” (Mays 629). The narrator talks about Emily’s house before when she was alive.

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647 Words | 3 Pages

These descriptions of the home and Miss Emily serve as a representation of the once thriving economy of the South that crumbled after the people lost their livelihoods and most of what they believed in. The theme, the struggle of letting go of the past, appeared in many aspects of “A Rose for Emily”. Miss Emily’s life following her father’s passing and the struggles of the South are examples of this.

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923 Words | 4 Pages

The story revolves around a southern woman named Emily Grierson who is the protagonist of the story. The time period of the story happened roughly around late 19th to early 20th century. The setting took place in a fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi. The narrator of the story is the people around Emily, which is full of judgmental and gossipers. In the story the narrator describes how Emily change physically and mentally over the years.

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1164 Words | 5 Pages

Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.

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