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Full Story Analysis. Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his ...
The police come to the old man's house. The narrator allows the police to come in and look around. He offers them drinks and has them sit in the old man's room where his body lies beneath the ...
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The major plot points in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" are as follows: The exposition of the story is at the beginning when the narrator describes his acute sense of perception to the audience. From ...
- The Narrator and The Narrative
- The Supernatural
- It Was All A Dream
- What Is and Isn't Here
Gothic literature often uses a complicated narrative structure. It is common for stories to be told through found manuscripts, incomplete manuscripts, overheard stories, and other devices. The unnamed narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" fits well in this tradition. Poe gives no context for the start of the story, though since the narrator ends the st...
Setting aside the narrator's mental state, evidence of supernatural forces exists. Consider, for example, the way the light from the lantern strikes the old man's eye and nothing else. Evidence that the story is purely natural is actually harder to find. The entire story is markedly strange, from the fact that the old man doesn't notice his intrude...
When the police enter, the narrator says the scream the neighbor heard was his own, in a dream. This, along with the aforementioned dreamlike quality of the whole story, suggests another reading: the narrator actually dreamed the whole killing. That doesn't resolve the question of his sanity—he'd still have to be insane to think he hears a heart be...
Ultimately Poe makes it impossible to determine any of these interpretations as definitive, and that may be the point. Poe's theories and methods for creating the ideal short story can be found in "The Tell-Tale Heart." For a better understanding of Poe's technique, it is essential to understand both what is present in his story and what is missing...
Student Instructions. Create a visual plot diagram of "Tell-Tale Heart". Separate the story into the Exposition, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution. Create an image that represents an important moment or set of events for each of the story components. Write a description of each of the steps in the plot diagram.
- Which conflict dominates "The Tell-Tale Heart"?Internal and psychological conflict is the main problem in the story. The story centers around the narrator's obsession with the old man's eye and...
- How is the story made more interesting and suspenseful because of the point of view of the narrator?The story's storyline revolves around the unreliable narrator's point of view. As the reader attempts to distinguish between what is true and what...
- What does "The Tell-Tale Heart"'s falling action entail?As he continues to hear the heartbeat, the narrator becomes more and more desperate and uneasy, which is represented by the dropping action. He gra...
The Closeness of Love and Hate. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe explores how someone can hurt someone they purport to love. The murder of the old man predicates on the narrator’s inability to separate what he loves from what he hates—the old man from his eye. With his nighttime vigils, the narrator attempts to create a scenario where he ...
Exposition. Click the card to flip 👆. • We meet the characters: the narrator, who repeatedly insists on his sanity, and the old man who's pale blue eye disturbs the narrator. Click the card to flip 👆. 1 / 7.
