The Tell-Tale Heart Synthesis Essay

The mediums of poetry and the short story have seen many an author exalted and shunned, but none are more praised then Edgar Allan Poe. A prolific writing artist in the 19th century, Poe is still remembered today for his great works. In January of 1843 Poe published one of his greatest pieces,
“The Tell-Tale Heart”. “The Tell-Tale Heart” demonstrates Poe’s proficiency in communicating intensity through tuned punctuation and description.
Over the course of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe crafts a story of a troubled man taking the life of an elderly man who he despised only due to his eye. Poe depicts the narrator as a man who views himself as incredibly cunning, but is caught due to his weak will. Poe, through the narrator, describes in detail the

The author creates each character for one function in the story, and we are not expected to get invested in who they are but what they do. The narrator is crazed, motivated by his mad obsession with the old man’s vulture-like eye. After the narrator has recalled killing the old man he relishes in his clever procedure in hiding the man. The characters, beyond the narrator, are flat but serve their purposes.
Because of narrator’s position as the mouthpiece through which we hear the story, he receives vastly more characterization. The old man is only loathed due to his eye and later his heart haunts the mind of his killer. The men who call at the aged man’s house and talk with the narrator are nothing but drivers of the story, instruments that the narrator believes he can play, but he fails the articulation due to the
“hideous heart!” Unlike the narrator, Poe plays the instruments he is given, chief among them being punctuation. Skiles 2
Poe uses the key tool of punctuation splendidly in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. From start to finish,
Poe, through the narrator, asks the listener and himself if he is mad. The man’s insanity is

Over most of the story the narrator uses exclamation points sparingly. The use of punctuation reaches a peak in the final paragraphs when the man has had enough of the beating heart and the blood on his hands and he breaks his silence by yelling. During the “Tell-Tale Heart” Poe uses a great deal of em dashes, the em dashes add to the rapid and unsteady thoughts and actions of the narrator.
More importantly, during “the Tell-Tale Heart” Poe expertly uses descriptive words to heighten the impact and importance of settings and characters actions. The main setting of the story is the old man’s apartment. Poe offers little detail on the majority of the building, aside from one room: in this room the most important factors are the chairs that are sat on and the floorboards which are removed to place the old man’s corpse under. Poe specifically focuses on the actions of characters and the intensity with which they do them in the scene: “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.” Another example of Poe’s expert use of description, occurs in the final sentences when