In this section of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator has just concluded cleaning up any evidence that may have been left behind from his crime of executing the old man. The police showed up at 4 am because of a call from the neighbor about the old man screaming. The narrator lets in the officers and leads them around the house, soon he becomes arrogant and even lead them into the room where the old man is. This section has quality diction, “hastily” is used to describe how the narrator worked, it shows that he was working quickly which he believes ties back into his “wise precautions.” The narrator is attempting to convince the police -and himself- that he is not crazy. His argument is that he had precautions, one of which was to act “hastily”. Additional diction that the narrator uses to try and show that he isn’t mad are the words “cleverly” and “cunningly” which he uses to describe himself in an effort to appear sane.
The author uses sentence structure and syntax as well in this passage, in this passage there were two different instances of repetition. One example of repetition is when he used the rhetorical question, “for what had I now to fear?” Through the rhetorical question, the reader infers that the narrator was scared of the old man, or of himself. If the narrator was afraid of the old man it
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The simile in this passage is not the most complex, it is simply, “still dark as midnight” which shows that unlike other regions there is not even the slightest bit of light shining through. In turn the simile may have a deeper meaning than just the lack of light in the sky, it may be representing the lack of light in his life. There is also onomatopoeia represented in this story, “--ha! ha!” the laugh is not one of joy but one of triumph. The laugh shows that he believes that he won, the irony is that if his insanity had not gotten to him, he would be