Short stories essay

Your Name Course and Section Professor's Name November 27, 2024 The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe Summary In the tales that Feature Brady, the Narrator When he is, I confess why I wrote this tale; The Tell-Tale Heart is categorized by the murder of an older man, who the narrator claims was his friend. The old man, however, has a furtive, 'vulgar,' predatory look that the narrator cannot bear, and what becomes of this is the obsession that leads to murder. Every night for several nights, the unnamed narrator slips into the older man's room and waits until the blind eye is showing, with the explicit intention of murdering the man. On the eighth night, the narrator's nervousness gets the better part of him, and he has to make a noise that wakes the older man. Finally, the two wrestle; the narrator stabs the older man, decapitates him, and buries the body under the floorboards. However, the conflict is solved inside the local residence when the police come to investigate; the narrator is guilty, so he starts to hear the beating of the older man's heart beneath the floor. The sound increases until the narrator becomes insane and admits the crime in front of the judge, thinking they are hearing the sound of the heart. Unreliability of the Narrator The Tell-Tale Heart‘s narrator could be more reliable because the story portrays madness about his character and how he had seen the older man's eye. This is why he engages the reader throughout the entire story with his attempts to prove that he is sane (rendering himself very, very dreadfully nervous: "True! — true!"). This insistence, though, only evidences his unstable mind. His words tell us otherwise — he tries to rationalize the older man's murder and portrays the act as one that was planned. Also, his stranger suspicion and the illusion of listening to the beating of the older man's heart on the floor is a sign of insanity. His failure to reason that the root of his concern is the older man's offer and his regard in the eye of the older man presents him as a delusional character. The fact that the narrator is quite convinced that the eye had a magic spell on him and the compulsion he felt indicates the author's unreliability. Quotes Analysis 1 "True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I am mad?" (Poe). This quote is valuable because it reveals the main narrator's panic when he tries to convince everyone that he is sane, although the audience can see that he has lost his reason and acts weirdly. Its impact intensifies the wandering mind's real feelings and casts doubts on the credibility of the narrator's account of the reality that Glassman is entirely crazy. 2 "It was the beating of the old man's heart. It was the beating of his hideous heart!" (Poe). The madness portrayed by the narrator is shown through this quote. He is convinced that he can hear the older man's heart pounding below the floor, and though this is a delusion, it is nevertheless a reflection of guilt straight from the mind of a growing psychotic. That is how a man reacts to a non-existent sound, which only shows how much of a frame of mind his account of events is. 3 "I heard many things in the heavens. I heard many things in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" (Poe). This quote refers to the fact that the narrator is actually in a completely psychotic state. He wondered if he heard supernatural music and otherworldly ringing, indicating his mind was impaired. That he cannot understand these sounds as his imagination once again shows the unsteadiness of the narrator and his unreliability. Consequences of Unreliability This element is vital in developing tension, suspense, sharpness, and uncertainty in The Tell-Tale Heart. Throughout the film, the reader only follows the protagonist with certainty and is suspicious of his words since the narrator is not fully reliable. The deputy tries to assure his listener that something terrible is going on, and the more he argues his case and talks about his rationality, the more erratic he becomes. The more the events that he described can be doubted. The climax of the narrator's mental illness — the sound of the older man's heart — is followed by the confession that connects guilt to unreliable narration. This is not an amusing sadism yet, but the very inconsistency of the hero's character is the unpredictable that forms the tragic irony of the story: pride in one's reason and action leads to doom. This i...