Mood And Atmosphere In Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s stories are dark and mysterious.In the story “Tell-Tale Heart” he used the literary device of setting to create a threatning and scary mood. The elements he used were mood and atmosphere,geography,Time of day and elapsed time.

One of the most important elements of setting in this story is mood and atmosphere. This was important because of the lighting. In the story Poe mentions the room being pitch black,538:2. This effects the story because you don’t know who’s there,you might feel insecure. Another example would be when he confessed to the officers what he had done, because of the heart beating echo that he had made in his mind; he did this because he was feeling guilty of what he had done. 542:2. An additional example would be the old man’s eye. It made the man a lunatic, in other words it drove him mad even murderous . “Whenever it fell upon me,my blood ran cold: and so by degrees-very gradually- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”, 538:1.

Geography also had a major impact on this story because there was no life in the room. Therefore there are no plant life or animals except the crow and the vulture,538:1. Another example would be man-made geography. The story was focused in the supposedly “Evil Eyed man’s” bedroom where most people

He used time of day, mood and atmosphere,geography,and many more. In time of day he changed his antagonist’s mood by making him nice in the day but scary at night. Poe used geography by not adding in any plant life or animal life except the crow and the vulture. He used mood and atmosphere by changing the lighting to pitch black . Also by adding that he had told the officers what he had done. He told them because of his guilt of what he had done. This is how Poe used the element of setting to create a dark tone that affected us,the