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The Tale Tell Heart Literary Analysis

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Eston Racey English 102-010 Professor Kieths 26 October 2017 “The Tale Tell Heart” Literary Analysis “The Tale Tell Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a Gothic Fiction short story, in which the narrator uses lots of imagery and symbolism to describe how he has not gone mad, but had a legitimate reason to murder an old man because he had an “eye of a vulture.” (1) The setting of this story takes place in two locations, in the narrator’s mind as we are getting an image of what is going on in his mad mind, and it takes place in a dark bedroom in an undisclosed location. One would assume that this may be in a city setting possibly in an apartment since the old man’s screams were heard by his neighbor, and the police responded immediately. Edgar Allan Poe’s …show more content…

And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel--although he neither saw nor heard--to feel the presence of my head within the room." (2) The climax comes when the narrator opens a little crevice in the lantern so he can then see the vulture eye was open, and that sparks a deep rage in him. Then he heard the old man's beating heart that is constantly growing louder, and he grew more aggravated so he pounced on him in the dead of night, dragged the old to the floor, and pulled the bed over the old man to kill him. He took away what bedrooms are supposed to symbolize; a safe place to sleep in the night. Instead, the old man gets cut up and placed under the flooring because the narrator was threatened by the veiled eye. He is so proud of his burial ground in the bedroom that he brings the police there to sit down and talk, but instead gets distracted and overwhelmed by the ringing of "the old man's" heart that he folds and admits his wrongdoing to the police. "Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! Here, here! --it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

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