American Romantic Ideas in The Tell Tale Heart The Tell Tale Heart was a story written by Edgar Allan Poe and Benjamin Harper in 1843, and while this is widely considered to be a Dark Romantic story, it also has quite a few examples of Romantic elements. With that being said, the information that follows will explain how this work fits into the American Romantic narrative, both as a Romantic and Dark Romantic work. The Tell Tale Heart has elements such as valuing intuition over reason and needing nature to be sane, but it also has dark romantic elements such as being in a dark setting and have a dark overall mood, and that is why it fits into the Romantic Narrative. The most important and interesting part of The Tell Tale Heart is how the narrator feels about and reacts to the old man’s “Evil” eye. His actions are not that of a reasonable man. This leaves him with one more way to decide that this is the only option, and that is using his intuition. In this case, the narrator’s inner voice is telling him that if this old man’s eye is not dealt with, then something bad is going to happen. In the mind of any sane person, this notion would be instantly thrown out, but because the narrator is not mentally stable, thoughts like this tend to manifest and never go away. …show more content…
This story takes place in the middle of a big city and according to the American Romantic style, this is likely one cause of his insanity. If one were to look at the “rules” of the style, they would see that nature is often seen as the key to understand one’s self and the world around them. Because he was stuck in an apartment, in the middle of a city, his mind was almost definitely going crazy without nature. The readers, at this point, are left to wonder if a short getaway to campsite or another nature-based vacation spot would have given the narrator a reason to let the old man