Unit 1 Process Based Essay

Poe is known for his spine chilling stories of which all have the same genre of horror. Both of Poe’s stories, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, display a person with a psychotic personality. In both of these stories the narrator let’s his aggravations get the best of him and persuade him to kill. Both narrators kill someone they love because of their insane thoughts. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator loves the old man and doesn’t want to kill him but believes that he has to because of the old man’s evil eye. As the narrator states,”I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!—yes, it was this!” (691). Here he explains that all the actions he took were because of the eye.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, one of the themes is insanity. Insanity is portrayed from the opening statement of the narrator, his actions, and in his final fall into insanity during his confession.

Edgar Allan Poe often demonstrates madness in his short stories. Many times it comes from the first-person narrator. While the narrators are similar in the fact that they are both insane, they also have a lot of differences in the way that they are insane. A great way to compare the way the insanity differs in the narrators, is to compare two of Poe’s stories. Stories such as “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” do a good job showing the similarities and differences between the insanity in both of the stories, as well as the insanity in other short stories of Edgar Allan Poe’s.

First, Poe uses description to manifest character motivation. The motivation the character needs to kill the old man is to peer into the old man’s eye unanticipated that way he could have the unerring inducement to commit the act. “One of his eye resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with film over it.” The old man’s “vulture eye” patronizes the narrator because he finds the eye unbearable. The use of the word “vulture” describes to the reader just how much the narrator excrates the eye. Another example of description is,”And every morning, when the day

Modern artists today generally use images of physical and mental illness in literature. In The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, both short stories show the usage of illness, madness, and fear. The narrators in both stories try to convince the readers that the characters are physically and mentally ill. Edgar Allen Poe creates these vivid characters which successfully assist the building of plot and ideas. Poe demonstrates how a person’s inner turmoil and terror can lead to insanity through illustrative language.

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.

While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience.

“Insanity: n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” (Hill). This definition describes the narrator, a sweet yet deadly man, of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe seamlessly. (Appositive) A few prominent characteristics demonstrate the narrator’s insanity, and those include his motives, his actions, and his thoughts.

Edgar Allan Poe creates this menacing tone by the repetition and description of his senses. In the killing the narrators explains that the eye of the old man is the reason why he killed him in the first place .The description of the old man’s “eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with an film over it. Whatever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees”(1). The senses of the narrator helps to bring on the mood of menace into the story. Poe brings the horror even further once the murder has happened. The narrator starts the killing after the door was “open-wide, wide open-and I grew furious and I gaze upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness- all a dull blue, a hideous veil over it that chilled the very morren in my bones”(2). The

While looking into the mind of a narrator who battles between claiming to be sane while portraying a reality of insanity, readers who have read Edgar Allen Poe's, "The Tell-Tale Heart," have stated the narrator is insane. A closer look shows that he is actually sane by means of nervousness, patience, and murder.

American author Edgar Allen Poe illustrates how an individual’s internal chaos and anxiety can drive him insane. It is emotional narrative using pathos where Poe tells a dark murderous story through vivid characters, a puzzling plot and a setting that I found unique.

First, The Tell Tale Heart has many examples of insanity. For instance, the narrator demonstrates how much he loves the old man, but at the same time despises him due to his eye. Throughout the beginning the narrator questions the actions he took, and whether or not if he is crazy. “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me....For his gold I had no desire. I think that it was his eye!" Every night for the past eight nights the narrator creeps into the old man's house and stalks the old man watching his every move. This is most certainly insanity because he is breaking and entering just to look at the old man's eye. Next, The

The mood of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story was carefully crafted through use of the narrator who made the reader feel both on edge and dull. The story starts abruptly by giving no context to the reader, it starts with an unsettling phrase to which leaves the reader puzzled. The narrator shouts, “True --nervous-- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”(Poe). Throughout the story, the narrator continually attempts to prove himself normal to the reader. Even after describing his actions that society would categorize as insane, such as killing a person. The narrator talks into great detail about how exactly he killed the old man, but then suggests he is not mad because he was careful during the process which made him intelligent. His exact words were, “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body”(Poe). This paints a mood of being on edge because the motive behind the killing was solely based upon how the man 's eye watched him. This allows the reader to let their mind wander to what exactly about the eye made him so upset, leaving them suspenseful. The dull part of the story was presented by the actual killing of the man and the precautions the narrator took in order to get away with it(up until he admitted it). All in all, after the reading of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, it is safe to say most readers will be left with an unsettling feeling and many

In the dictionary the word insanity means,”In state of mind that prevents normal precipitation behavior,or social interaction. In the story the man was insane. Throughout the whole story he is trying to kill a old man because of his creepy eye. In the Tail Tale Heart by Edger Allan Poe use literary devices such as the setting,the mood,and last but not least the imagery. In this essay I will tell the reader why it is important. In the story Tail tale heart by Edger Allen Poe the author uses a lot of literary devices and i will talk about them in this essay.

Edgar Allan Poe has a unique way of showing madness throughout his short stories. Insanity is represented as the theme in these short stories through the narrators’ lack of reasons for committing murder. The horror and suspense Poe introduced throughout his work captured his talent while building tension over what the narrators’ actions would eventually be. One element of Poe’s work that I enjoy is how he grasped my attention with his creative set of skills, having me question the true meaning of insanity.