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Analysis Of Edgar Allan Poe And The Tell-Tale Heart

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“Humans are lied to as many as 200 times a day”, which makes one wonder… why do so many people lie when the truth always gets unburied (“10 Research Findings”)? This same ideology is shown in the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and the song “Secrets” by The Pierces. The narrator, and protagonist in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, struggles with the conflict of trying to convince the reader he is not mad by explaining a murder he committed. He killed an old man because of his vulture eye, and later admitted it to the police after hearing the old man’s dead heart. The song “Secret” follows the speaker, and protagonist, who thinks it is impossible to keep a secret, coming to the resolution you need to kill the person you tell. In …show more content…

“The Tell-Tale Heart” uses symbolism while the song uses tone and mood. In the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator is utterly focused on disproving his insanity to the reader. Nevertheless, …show more content…

Nevertheless, the theme is shown through the song’s tone and mood. In the process of the speaker describing her tips for keeping the truth under control, she shows how powerful it is. The chorus of the song states, “Got a secret/ Can you keep it?/ Swear this one you’ll save/ better lock it in your pocket; Taking this one to the grave/ If I show you then I know you won’t tell what I said,” then, the speaker emphasizes and shifts her tone for, “one of them is dead” in, “‘Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead” (Secret 1-7). The speaker’s stress and tone shift on “one of them is dead” is to show emphasis on death (Secret 7). This illustrates how crucial the truth is to the speaker. If it was not important the speaker would not be willing to murder someone to keep it. In addition, the harsh sounds and rhyme, from secret, keep it, and pocket, which are broken up by the soft sounds and rhyme, from “save” and “grave”, help create the eerie, sinister mood. This mood makes the reader feel on edge and creeped out. The theme is shown by the mood since it allows the speaker to effectively “scare” the listener about the fact that she is willing to do anything to keep the truth hidden. The speaker does not even want to murder her friend. The mood and tone later in the song show that the speaker is irritated and angry at her friend for “forcing” the speaker to kill her. The

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