Gothic Elements in "The Telltale Heart"

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the reader is presented with the short story of a madman who narrates his murder of an old man because, “he had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 105). The narrator has thought thoroughly about his plan to murder this old man, and the murderer then stashes his body underneath the floorboards. Eventually, his guilt overcomes him and he starts hallucinating that he hears the old man’s heartbeat. Ultimately, he confesses to the police about his crime after being driven to the point of insanity due to his remorse. “The Tale Tell Heart” is one of Poe’s best-known stories because he utilizes the elements of Gothic Literature to establish a disturbing sense of mystery throughout the story. Farida characterizes Gothic Literature as “the elements of fear, horror, the supernatural and darkness” (Foster 1), and Poe effectively adopts this style in many of his short story. These ominous characteristics give the story both a dark and spontaneous sequence of events that draws the reader in. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe employs several Gothic elements such as the setting, emotion, and the word choice in order to communicate an uncertain description of reality. In any case, Poe 's technique definitely holds your attention coming into the story.

Edgar Allen Poe is famous for his works displaying gothic themes, brutality, and unstable characters. The Tell-Tale Heart, one of his best known stories, involves an irrational narrator. The narrator kills an old man due to an obsession the narrator has with the man’s eye. The narrator lacks sufficient motivation for the murder, only that he was terrified of the old man’s eye. The narrator successfully executes his plan, but eventually gets caught due to his own paranoia.

Object there was none. Passion there was none. 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! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. 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”(41).

In the case of traditional Gothic stories, the horror films Frankenstein, Night of the Living Dead or A Nightmare on Elm Street pop into my mind. Edgar Allan Poe was much more into the psychological aspects of murder and terror: it is not the setting or a scary monster, but the narrator’s loony and homicidal mind that gives us goosebumps. In A Cask of Amontillado, our narrator and murderer, Montesor seemingly never goes mad, he commits the crime totally willfully, but he does not show any signs of having gone nuts. Well, of course, we couldn’t call a man, who buries his ’friend’ alive, completely reasonable and sensible. The penultimate sentence („For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them”), however, tells me how deeply affected his mind is by this deed and the remorse, as he is still thinking (in fact writing) about this plot that happened half a century ago. I reckon that despite the calmness Montresor shows, he has been haunted by these thoughts ever since he left his friend to fate. In The Tell-Tale Heart we meet an unnamed narrator, a complete lunatic with a knack for murder. While Montresor at least had a motive for the murder (Fortunato’s constant insults), our loony in The Tell-Tale Heart has none. Our assassin shows a clear aberration for the old man’s ’vulture-eye’ but still he cannot name any lucid reason to kill the man.

Gothic Literature has been around since the late 17th century, slowly progressing in popularity until the mid 19th century where it had much success demonstrated through Edgar allan Poe. Edgar Allan has a number of common Themes, motifs and structures that make his work easily recognizable and more importantly, fits his stories into the classification of the gothic. Among these elements, they include the theme of death and decay, which is almost always in Gothic fiction, the theme or presence of madness, insanity or other internal chaos, and haunted or creepy locations. Some stories by Poe that include these elements are, “Tell-Tale heart” and “The Raven”. Edgar Allan

All too often the gothic literature genre is reduced in its interpretation to gloomy weather and archaic haunted houses. These patterns do exist, but they do not define the genre. Gothic literature found its niche in the 18th and 19th centuries, and during the Victorian era it served a more nuanced purpose than simply to scare readers. Many gothic authors used a monster as a vessel to symbolize topics that the Victorian era sensibilities would label as “monstrous.” They are the incarnation of the taboo subjects society is trying to repress. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart”, the authors use Freudian symbolism along with literary symbolism to demonstrate the repercussions of repressing “id” desires.

Edgar Allen Poe was known for his dark-romanticism writings which evoked horror in readers. Seen specifically in his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, readers are able to get into the mind of the mentally ill narrator who murders an elderly man, one whom he claimed to love. Poe created conflict in this story by having the narrator admit to loving the man and having him be his caretaker. Conflict, and the story line, is created because it makes readers question why he would commit such a heinous crime as killing and dismembering the man. Readers eventually find out that it is the elderly man’s eye that pushes the narrator to do what he does. The narrator is trying to justify his actions and prove his sanity by explaining how he observes

Poe uses literary devices commonly throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart” to convey a more in depth account of the narrator's mental state. To begin, Foreboding is used to foretell the fate of the old man. For example, due to the myth that death watches appear when death is near, the presence of these creatures forebodes a nearby death. “He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall” (Poe). The mention of the death watches insights uncertainty due to the unknowing nature of what is about to happen next contributing to the uneasy mood of the narrative. Secondly, Irony is used to depict how the narrator defends himself by contradicting what he says. For instance, the narrator unconsciously creates the direct conflicting idea by emphasizing his love for the old man, nonetheless murdering him subsequently, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story titled “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a fine example of a psychological thriller consisting of gothic elements. The story was written and published in 1843 and gives a first person view into the eyes of a murderous maniac who has decided to kill an elderly man because of an eye. To create a gloomy atmosphere, Poe uses a variety of techniques including imagery, repetition and a dark range of nouns. All of these combine to make a dark and gloomy atmosphere.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a petrifying short story. Poe incorporated a variety of literary elements to intimidate the reader. Personification, theme, and symbols are combined to create a suspenseful horror story.

Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.

“The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe is a fantastic short story, but how does it fit into literature? The story uses elements and techniques that delve into the gothic genre and allows the reader to be introduced to a darker reality. In “The Tell Tale Heart”, gothic elements reveal themselves in the short story through the use of setting and also through the use of characterization. These two elements are key components which demonstrate gothic features and help to classify this story as gothic literature. Murder and the supernatural elements also show that this text can be considered within the gothic genre of literature.

Edgar Allan Poe, renowned as the foremost master of the short-story form of writing, chiefly tales of the mysterious and macabre, has established his short stories as leading proponents of “Gothic” literature. Although the term “Gothic” originally referred only to literature set in the Gothic (or medieval) period, its meaning has since been extended to include a particular style of writing. In order for literature to be “Gothic,” it must fulfill some specific requirements. Firstly, it must set a tone that is dark, somber, and foreboding. Next, throughout the development of the story, the events that occur must be strange, melodramatic, or often sinister. Poe’s short stories are

It can show fantasy, darkness and it is possible that the old man in the story never existed. It is the capacity of the narrator’s imagination which makes him creates the old man. It all seems that nothing that he says happens in real life. For instance, the old man eyes, heartbeat, the night, the police, and so on, are all fruits of his fantasy. The eyes could represent his psychological sin and guilt, and the old man depicts his own personality. He wants to get rid of the eyes because it has a darkness sin which does not allow him to have a good sanity. The narrator separates the old man’s personality to his eye, and in the end, he assumes by getting rid of the eyes he could still love the man and live in peace with his mental sanity. However, this strategy does not work out well and turned against him because does not only kill the eyes but also the old