Paper Topic:
english
The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe 's chilling horror story The Tell-Tale Heart ' deftly interweaves the grotesque details of a horrific murder with a cold precise narration that lacks emotion and maintains a distance from the events it is describing . This is what makes the story so effective in terms of its dramatic tension and horror element - the events that occur are nothing short of gruesome , yet the narrator is able to maintain a very casual these are the facts ' type of approach to the telling of his story . He could just
as easily be speaking of someone else 's story or making up a macabre tale to scare others with , with this level of emotional detachment
Throughout the story , the narrator continuously insists that he is not crazy . He uses his very own actions as proof that he is not crazy because a crazy person would not be able to execute his level of planning and his attention to detail in such an , as he seems to think impressive way . He is almost gleeful in the recounting of his actions in his ability to stand perfectly still in the dark and take the old man by surprise , in his careful dismemberment of the body so as not to spill any blood , in his clever hiding spot for the body with the carefully replaced floorboards . He is very proud of how clever he was in all of this , which makes the story that much more terrifying for the reader - this is a man with no sympathy , with no regard for human life , with no emotion whatsoever . He took a man 's life because the man 's diseased eye bothered him , then recounts his own vicious cruelty to the man and revels in his own ingeniousness
The narrator also has a tendency to narrate in a way that is frantic - the reader can almost hear the man speaking , because he narrates the way a frantic person might actually speak . He stops to congratulate himself , to force the reader /listener to enjoy his triumphant moments he shouts out his own fears and obsessive , irrational thoughts . His manner of narrating is of , pardon the pun , but a crazy person , which is exactly what he is trying to convince the people he is relaying the tale to that he isn 't
Because of this at-times-frantic , at-times-eerily-calm narration style the pacing is another element that adds to the horror of the story When the narrator is describing looking into the old man 's bedroom at night , waking him up and then remaining perfectly still , the pacing is appropriately slow and delayed , leaving the reader to wonder what he is going to do to the old man and why is he drawing it out so long . By contrast , the pacing when the narrator describes parading around the house with the officers in tow , proudly showing off how he is hiding nothing and arrogantly seating them in the very room in which the murder took place and...
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