Irony In The Tell Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe, the author of many short stories and poems such as A Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher, and much more, uses imagery, irony, and parallel structure in order to convey a common dark truth. Poe was an American writer who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809. By the age of two years old, his family had been abandoned by his father and his mother died the following year. After his mother’s death, he had been orphaned. Later on, when he became a writer, he used his warped past to make meaningful pieces of literature that are still and will continue to be, treasured. Overall Poe uses the stylistic elements such as vivid imagery and verbal and dramatic irony to help the reader better understand

This includes diction and what he portrayed with powerful, loaded words in the short story The Fall of the House of Usher “I looked upon the scene before me --upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain --upon the bleak walls --upon the vacant eye-like windows --...” (p.1) , or how he used repetition to convey a mood of anxiety in The Tell-Tale Heart “Louder, louder, louder” (p.9), or even how he creates eloquent pictures in the minds of his readers as he writes about the tapping upon his window pane in the poem, Nevermore “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” (p.1). Poe uses imagery as a way to help the reader picture emotion that he wants one to feel in order to convey a mood of dreariness and bleakness. Poe uses a narrator “It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee;” (Annabel Lee p.1) in order to help the reader further relate to the author. Imagery allows Poe to get the attention of the reader’s imagination and captivate a common emotion of suspense and horror. Poe used his reader’s reaction to his writing as a way to feel normal. He would write in a way that would make the reader feel impart to the mentally ill narrator so that he, himself, could feel like a traditional

Poe uses very complex syntax in many of his short stories and poems. He also uses irony and vivid imagery in order to convey a series of eerie truths that have resonated in the hearts of millions of readers. Poe uses great examples of situational, dramatic, and verbal irony in The Cask of Amontillado, Annabel Lee, and Tell-Tale Heart. His sentence structure tends to be long, flowy and intricate in the beginning “ Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place — some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.” (The Black Cat p.1). However, in the middle, the sentence structure tends to be short and almost staccato in nature, allowing the reader to quicken their pace and become more interested in the story “With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.” (The Black Cat p.18). Yet in the end, just like the beginning, the sentences are prolonged and meticulous “Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.” (The Black Cat p.31) Poe’s writing style has changed the way American and international