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The Journey In Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell Tale Heart

1131 Words5 Pages

Teagan Hawes
Author’s Craft Essay
In life, humanity needs to see past the surface of others, or they will face the pain of guilt later on. In the story, “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator has an obsession with an old man’s eye--an eye that brought great agony among the narrator whenever he looked upon it. He couldn’t bare seeing that eye any longer, thus, he decided to kill the old man because of it. Feeling great remorse and guilt by the end of the story, the narrator becomes paranoid and scared. There are a variety of craft moves that are compounded to contribute to this story and make it as interesting as it is. Edgar Allan Poe uses the craft move of first person narration throughout the story for a multitude of purposes. …show more content…

“He has the eye of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees--very gradually--I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” The narrator did not want to kill the old man because of his personality, but only because of his “vulture eye”. We wouldn’t know this was his motivation if this story was not told in first person. One would think that he despised the old man because of his actions, but it was just something on the old man’s surface that made the narrator think so poorly of him. First person narration allows the reader to dig deeper into the story, and see the true meaning of scenes, and it allows them to understand the story better. This whole story would have had a different impact on the reader if they hadn’t known the narrator’s motivation for the crime committed. “The Tell Tale Heart” contrasts from the movie, “The Murder on the Orient Express” because the viewer was confused up until the end of the movie, for then did they figure out the character’s motives for committing the murder. Some will say it was much less enjoyable because there were no motives to be found until the very end, whereas first person narration can tell us right from the

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