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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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But since the main character tries to kill him in his sleep, the vulture’s eye cannot be seen for he closes his eyes. Then one night the main character decides to spy on the old man once again when suddenly his hand slips and awakes the old man. Upon awaking the old man the main character sees the eye and is immediately infused with fury. Then the story takes off and the story becomes more suspenseful with every turn of the way. Suspense is the sense of

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In the “Tell Tale Heart, the ” the first person narrator tells us why he wants to kill the old man. He also uses the first person narrator to show the reader that the narrator is mentally ill. In the raven, the first person narrator gives us background knowledge and his motivation which is the fact that his wife is dead. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” Poe also use dialogue to show that the narrator is insane by the narrator saying that he only killed the old man because of the old man's eye. In the raven, they use dialogue to show the men thrive to get rid of the raven and to show what he is thinking throughout the passage.

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The narrator eventually was brought to the point of killing the old man overt the vulture eye. To argue with this statement, one could say that the vulture eye scared the narrator to murder. As anyone could say, people do crazy things out of fear. To add onto the

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The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.

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The narrator is so angry at the eye that he feels he needs to kill the old

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Edgar Allan Poe made sure the reader knew more than the secondary character in his short story to build suspense. For the entire week before he murdered the old man, the main character crept into his bedroom every night, and observed the man while he slept. “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 the bed… He was still sitting up in the bed, listening;--just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.” From the beginning, the audience knew the man would be murdered, and the suspense built from this knowledge.

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Through the entire story, Poe had it so the reader always knew something was going to happen, but constantly question when and what. “The Tell Tale Heart” continually makes the reader think and sparks a certain interest. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, there are multiple instances of suspense. One part with a lot is when the narrator is going to actually kill the

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The narrator 's sole reason for such murder is purely in his disturbed mind, as he develops an obsession with the old man 's eye and the plot unfolds from here where his insanity augments with the events of the story. Due to Poe’s illustrative language, various evidence can be presented to confirm the state of mind of the narrator, including, his obsession with the old man’s eye, his precision in committing the impeccable crime and finally the sound of the man’s beating heart solely inside his head. Perhaps it all started with the narrator’s obsession with the man’s “vulture eye” since he believes the eye of being evil, proving the insanity he is gravely trying to deny “I think it was

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No sane person would think of doing such a thing, they would just avoid seeing the old man. Instead, the narrator chooses to kill the old man which does not make sense to the average, but to him, this is the only way to relieve himself of the eye. As the narrator craziness increases throughout the story, one can see how the eye of the old

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