I Felt A Funeral In My Brain

Edgar Allan Poe is a prominent writer who wrote many peculiar and uncanny short stories and poems. One of the stories Poe wrote, “The Tell Tale Heart,” published in 1843, is about a narrator who is paranoid about an old man’s eye, so he decides to eradicate it. Another story by Poe, “The Cask of Amontillado,” published in 1846, is about a narrator who seeks revenge on his friend because, in the past, he was insulted by him. Both stories contain narrators, which are mentally unstable, but the narrator’s traits, their motives for the murder, and how their guilt is exhibited differ.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" consists of a monologue in which the murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt: "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded . . ." (Poe 121). By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is

Emily Dickinson was one of the many famous American poets whose work was published in the 19th century. Her writing style was seen as unconventional due to her use of “dashes and syntactical fragments”(81), which was later edited out by her original publishers. These fragmented statements and dashes were added to give emphasis to certain lines and subjects to get her point across. Even though Emily Dickinson was thought to be a recluse, she wrote descriptive, moving poems on death, religion, and love. Her poems continue to create gripping discussions among scholars on the meaning behind her poems.

Poe indicates through the occurrence of the events that the narrator has descended into madness. As his guilt constantly haunts him, the narrator is unable to hide it any longer, and confesses everything to the authorities, which ruins his seemingly “perfect crime.” Here, his sanity is in question, as no man of sound mind would openly confess his evil doings to the authorities. The fact that he narrates his crime to prove that he is sane, proves that he is in fact, insane (Holland).

     In Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the storyteller tries to convince the reader that he is not mad. At the very beginning of the story, he asks, "...why will you say I am mad?" When the storyteller tells his story, it's obvious why. He attempts to tell his story in a calm manner, but occasionally jumps into a frenzied rant. Poe's story demonstrates an inner conflict; the state of madness and emotional break-down that the subconscious can inflict upon one's self.

Syntax isn’t the only way Poe manipulates his narrators to show their own madness. The constant theme of denial of insanity further convinces the reader of the characters’ senselessness. Poe, in “The Black Cat” writes “Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad I am not – and surely do I not dream.”(H/O). Here, the narrator of “The Black Cat” states that it is possible for his actions and thought process to be interpreted as mad, still in his mind, he is not mad at all. By denying his insanity, the narrator creates a suspicion in the reader, making them question the integrity of his mind. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is more adamant about repeating the fact that he is not insane. “…will you say that I am mad?...I have heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” (Poe H/O) The narrator obviously worries about the fact that people may see him as a lunatic. The reader can infer that by denying his lack of sanity, and clinging to the hope that he may in fact have a sound mind; the narrator has lost all sense of reality, and cannot be trusted. Both of these stories have similar narrators in the sense that they may have once been sane, and a traumatic event has pushed them over the edge into the depths of derangement.

In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" we question the sanity of the narrator almost immediately, but we cannot prove either way whether or not he is insane. I have read a lot of Poe's work although not all of it. His mysterious style of writing greatly appeals to me. Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and the hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives. I believe, for the most part, that this is done through his use of setting and his narrative style. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the setting was used to portray a dark and gloomy picture of an old house lit only with lantern light with a possible madman lurking inside. I think this was

In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase

The main character, our narrator for the story is portrayed by Poe in the opening lines as a rather collected yet disturbed character; voicing his concern for the readers assumption at his insanity (37) providing dramatic irony in that the reader knows the narrator is indeed demented. In Arthur Robinson’s “Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” he discusses character flaws of the narrator: “He [the narrator] bases his plea upon the assumption that

Poe uses repetition to create suspense in his literary works. He will often do this in “The Black Cat” or “The Tell-Tale Heart” to put emphasis on a vital part of the story. As it says in the story, “One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; -- hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; -- hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and

Edgar Allen Poe was a great author in the 18th century. He is the author of both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. Both of these stories show the dark and mysterious ways of the narrator. Well, these stories have been written by the same author. Hence, they have some similarities and differences. Poe is a great writer who can describe a scene in one paragraph. The stories have the right tone and a gloomy mood. Edgar Allen Poe being the author of The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, he shows some similarities like the mood of the narrators though there is a difference in the characteristics of the narrators. The narrators have similar motives and mental states though their plans of action and the outcomes of their crimes are different.

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.

Emily Dickinson is one of the most interesting female poets of the nineteenth century. Every author has unique characteristics about him/her that make one poet different from another, but what cause Emily Dickinson to be so unique are not only the words she writes, but how she writes them. Her style of writing is in a category of its own. To understand how and why she writes the way she does, her background has to be brought into perspective. Every poet has inspiration, negative or positive, that contributes not only to the content of the writing itself, but the actual form of writing the author uses to express his/her personal talents. Emily Dickinson is no different. Her childhood and adult experiences and culture form

Authorial intrusion, which is uncommon in most works of contemporary fiction, is arguably the most important literary device Poe uses to construct the narrator’s manic voice. Though the entire story is written as a confessional, the unnamed chronicler frequently interrupts his recount to attempt to convince the reader that he actually isn’t insane. After explaining his egregious crime along with the motivation; the narrator proceeds to state  “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me” (92). These erratic sentences interrupt the flow of the writing but are extremely important in developing the narrator's voice as it further  Following the quote he explains the methodical lengths he went through; lengths that only an absolute psychopath would find rational, and attempts to justify them as his own cunning intellect rather than an insatiable desire to kill. He reiterates a similar variation of this sentence multiple times throughout his recounting of the events, “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer” (95) and “have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?” (94), which again helps to reinforce this idea that the narrator is truly unaware of his own madness.

To begin with, Poe valued punctuation in its ability to make a point. Proper use of punctuation allowed the reader to feel the