In the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the house of Usher”, and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe, setting has a significant impact on the central ideas and themes that are presented. In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the couple of themes that are presented are differently impacted by the setting. In the beginning, all we really get is the fact that the narrator is a man who lives in the same neighborhood as an old man who lives in an old house. For eight nights straight, the narrator broke into this old man’s bedroom to look at him when his eyes were closed and not visible. The fact that Poe uses night time for the man to break into an old man’s house which is a scary thought already, adds to the scariness. One of the central ideas of this short story …show more content…
Traditionally, a home is a place where people are supposed to safe, secure and “at home.” In this story though, there is no sense of these feelings at all. In this home there is a feeling of creepiness, false-security, isolation and death. Another central idea presented in this story is sanity. This is one of the ideas that setting does not play a large role in presenting. The actions that the neighbor takes against the old man completely illustrates this theme. For example when the narrator thought that the old man had an “evil eye” and that he had to kill the eye for a reason that is clearly apparent to the him but not at all apparent to the reader. Also the fact that he chops up the old man, stuffs him under the floorboards, and is able to carry on a normal conversation with the police shows that maybe this narrator most likely is unreliable. With all of this in mind, he still pleads his sanity. The actual geographical location had no impact on the story because there is no specific geographical