ipl-logo

What Is The Mood Of The Tell Tale Heart

999 Words4 Pages

Fairytale Twist: A Review of Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”
Gothic literature is an interesting genre to read. It’s fascinating how authors can really put their mind into it and write something so amazing. Poe’s stories remind me of the movie prom night. A movie whose atmosphere really pulls me in, just like Poe’s stories. Prom night and The Tell-Tale Heart both share common scary factors, one of which is death. An element that really captivates my attention. One poet in particular whose work I personally find very intriguing is that of Edgar Allan Poe. More specifically his famous story; The Tell-Tale heart. In my view, I imagine the story taking place in a spooky mansion. Being that most gothic literature are set in dark, horror-esque places …show more content…

The moods vary from mysterious, to insanity, and horror. The story has that element of mystery because before he kills the old man, I had asked myself: Is he seriously going to do it? And why would he do that to someone he claims “he loves and never wronged him” (Poe 1). I find this to be suspenseful and mysterious because it keeps me over the edge and it makes me want to read more to find out what the narrator will do next. In the beginning of the story, the narrator tries to prove his sanity to the readers. However, that is proven to be false, because of his hatred to the old man’s eye. “He had the eye of a vulture… I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 1). This demonstrates how the narrator is becoming insane and horrifying; he wants to get rid of someone’s eye. At one point in life Poe was insane and lonely. The narrator is emotionless throughout the story, as he plans for a long time, the perfect moment to take the man’s life. He felt pride in taking the old man’s life. But after the police arrives to investigate the house; he starts to hear “beatings of his hideous heart” (Poe 5). As the dreadful sound of the deceased man’s beating heart grew louder and louder, he starts feeling the guilt. Guilt is the motif in the …show more content…

With the purpose being to get us anxious about what is going to happen next and also makes the readers ask themselves questions. On the last page, the third paragraph: there is many repeated words to provoke the reader’s attention. “Then it grew louder—louder... Louder! Louder!” (Poe 5). This really makes the story alive and makes the readers anxious about the narrator’s next move. Also repetition is used in the previous quote to demonstrate the climax of the story. When I was reading this part of the story I kept asking myself: Is he going to confess? Is the old man actually dead? Or did he just lie about the whole

Show More
Related
981 Words | 4 Pages

At the beginning of The Tell-Tale Heart, the protagonist talks about his recent murder of an old man: “…observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Poe 22) This has already set the mood to very disturbing and creepy. Not even two pages later, the protagonist set the mood to increasingly more disturbing with his calmness about killing someone he loves: “I loved the old man. . .

Read More
209 Words | 1 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe creates this menacing tone by the repetition and description of his senses. In the killing the narrators explains that the eye of the old man is the reason why he killed him in the first place .The description of the old man’s “eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with an film over it. Whatever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees”(1). The senses of the narrator helps to bring on the mood of menace into the story.

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

An example is that the narrator says, “It grew quicker and quicker, louder and louder every instant!” (Poe 92). The noise was the heart of the old man. This creates suspense by telling the reader the old man is getting scared because he knows there is a intruder, and it keeps the reader reading to to find out what happens next. Another example of repetition is, “It grew louder - louder - louder!”

Read More
519 Words | 3 Pages

After the narrator killed the old man, two cops showed up to the home because of a noise complaint from a neighbor. He invited the officers in, figuring that they would not be aware of anything that happened previously. However, after spending time with the cops in no other than what was the old man's room, he started having insane anxiety. He started hearing the sound of the man’s heart; “The ringing became more distinct: –it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness –until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears” (Poe 7). At this point it was unknown whether or not the narrator was going to own up to the officers about what he did or if he would keep quiet and not tell them.

Read More
635 Words | 3 Pages

Many of Poe’s stories have something to do with death and things that lead to death. Poe’s story “Raven” is about death, the name means death. The Tell Tale Heart and Raven are both good examples, they both have a theme of

Read More
674 Words | 3 Pages

Without, further ado let’s analyze Edgar Allan Poe’s writing The Tell-Tale Heart. The first horror genre element I noticed in his writing was an internal source of horror.

Read More
280 Words | 2 Pages

Rather than writing a story of love, Edgar Allan Poe took a heart, typically a symbol of love, and created “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a twisted and dark story of a heart with ever-changing moods. First, the text says “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening. . .” (79). It also says, “Upon the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door” (79). With these two quotes, the author of the story creates a mood of anxiety by describing how cautiously the narrator put his head through the door.

Read More
266 Words | 2 Pages

Edgar Allan Poe creates fear and dread in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by using a lot of details and really specific on what he was doing. He went into detail on how he killed the old man. “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.”

Read More
647 Words | 3 Pages

With all we know about Poe and his many works, we 're hit with suspense and anticipation by the first part of the story. Later in the tale, the narrator slows down and reveals his preparations that lead to the murder in such a deliberately enticing and suspenseful way, that even though you knew what was going to happen, it was still intense and suspenseful to read. These moods were further carried on by the way the narrator

Read More
1655 Words | 7 Pages

Poe’s use of horror in his stories is consistently graphic, but more so disturbingly calm and sadistic in nature. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, after suffocating his master, the narrator calmly and methodically divides up the corpse in order to more easily hide it. He describes this in vivid detail, “The night waned, and I worked hastily, but

Read More
146 Words | 1 Pages

The Gothic individual is most commonly found to be isolated from society itself. Most gothic individuals such as Norman Bates, have had a bad past or a difficult time growing up. In Tell -tale heart, the narrator seems to have various thoughts running through his mind because of the suspicious old man staring at him but he fails to recognize what he is actually doing. It was his top priority to learn about this “old man” even though that man was just a stranger who had no business or relationship with the narrator. Instead, the narrator decides to follow this ‘stranger just because he looks suspicious look across from the street.

Read More
879 Words | 4 Pages

Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart “The Tell-Tale Heart” short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator which is the murder in the story is trying to convince the audience that he is not insane. He has been ill, but insists that his illness has made his mind, feeling, and senses even stronger. The narrator wants to kill the old man that he lives with only because he finds that his eye is evil and compares his eye to a vulture. “And every morning I went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice I asked him how he had slept. He could not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.”

Read More
881 Words | 4 Pages

At this moment the factor that sends him over the edge appears; the heart, or in other words, the narrators guilt. The narrator hears the old man’s heartbeat, and fears the neighbors will hear it, and this thought drives him to finally kill the old man. After the grisly deed is done, he cleans up and hides the body, just before policemen arrive to investigate the old man’s scream. At first he is jovial with them, he knows he will not be caught. But ere long, he begins to hear the heartbeat again, as his guilt over the crime wells up within him.

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

There is always something that bothers us in life, whether it’s others or even our own conscious. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator has a difficult time following through with his cruel acts because a part of him knows it’s truly wrong. Throughout the story, his crimes bring more tension between him and the old man. Suspense is created with his every move, leaving readers hanging on the edge of their seats. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe builds suspense by using symbolism, inner thinking, and revealing information to the reader that a character doesn’t know about.

Read More
678 Words | 3 Pages

To conclude, in “The Tell Tale Heart”, Poe uses the technique of suspense

Read More

More about What Is The Mood Of The Tell Tale Heart

Related Topics

Open Document