Tell Tale Heart Central Idea

Fear is a survival skill that tells you what to avoid in life and helps you become aware of different dangers. Yet, though fear helps avoid certain dangers, it can also lead you to a different type of danger: paranoia. If one lets themselves become trapped into their fears, paranoia begins to settle into our minds, making us feel as if these fears are surrounding us, and there is no such way to escape them. It can also make us so obsessed that we begin to have hallucinations, believing that these fears may be out to get us. In short stories written by Edgar Allen Poe, each main character experiences the helpful or harmful sides of fear and deals with it in different ways.

Poe is considered one of the greatest short story writers of his time. He is known for writing short stories of mystery and horror. (Editors) His major writings include: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Cask of Amontillado”. His short story, “The Raven”, is one of the most famous poems ever written in English.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ( Voltaire) This quote helps explain the main idea of The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe , a story about a narrator who is the caregiver of the old man who explains his reasons and his exact ways for killing the old man he was taking care of. Out of spite for the victims vulture-like cataract eye, he plots this plan to kill for weeks to rid of the eye. He finally succeeds until a nosy neighbor foils the scheme. These are 3 reasons why the narrator is guilty of murder.

The Tell-Tale Heart: Indirect Characterization In the excerpt “from The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe creates the conflicted character of an unnamed narrator through indirect characterization. Using the components of Action, what others say, and character’s internal thoughts, Poe portrays a story about insanity and reveals the conflicted and even insane thoughts and emotions going on in the character’s head. Poe uses Action as a component of indirect characterization to depict the meaning of the poem in many instances.

The short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by Edgar Allan Poe, is about an unnamed man who uses self-deception as a way to justify his harrowing act of murdering his elderly roommate. The first deception that he tries to convince the reader of is the fact that he is not a madman. He has a completely the unreasonable idea that he can prove his sanity “by ‘healthily’ and ‘calmly’ retelling the story of how he murdered his roommate” (Desmondleica np). He points out that mad men know nothing and don’t plan, but he is very intelligent and his plan to murder and hide his the old man body is pure genies. In fact, he is extremely proud of his murderous plan and continues to brag about how intelligent he is.

A narrator: defined as a person who guides or tells the story of events through one’s own experience. As far as we are told, the narrator tells the story precisely and can make the words of the page come to life. Yet, is it possible for the narrator to tell the story incorrectly through their own perspective? This well-written horror shows us anything is possible in the art of literature. From reading “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, readers learn that the narrator is unreliable and therefore cannot be trusted to tell the story completely accurately.

Have you ever been in a bad situation but tried to make the best out of it? Even when someone tells you everything will be fine just keep a positive mind. The same can be said about these two short stories. In “The Hitchhiker” the main character Ronald Adams is driving to California, and is seeing this strange man follow him around while he is driving. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” The old man has the narrator after him trying to end the old man’s eye forever.

Motifs are repeating images that are being explained throughout the story. They help represent and symbolize the main idea of the theme. Edgar Allan Poe stories contain different types of motifs that then lead to the theme. In the "Tell-Tale Heart," Poe expressed motifs that did develop the theme. For example, the old man’s eye.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a gothic murder story, in which a storyteller portrays a demonstration of murder rehearsed by him. The storyteller, which is distressed by some kind of mental sickness, depicts how and why he ended the life of an old man which he evidently loved. The mental ailment comprises of him seeing the old man's eye as a "vulture" or "hostile stare" which burdens the storyteller significantly driving him to the point of carrying out the wrongdoing. The inquiry postured to the perusers is if the storyteller is coming clean and isn't just regurgitating franticness in the record of a mental issue? I trust that the storyteller is distraught, and has some kind of mental issue, I think the storyteller is questionable.

Thesis: With increasingly darkening imagery, Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Disney’s The Lion King prove that obsession eats at the heart, consumes the mind, and results in self-destruction.