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Tell Tale Heart Analysis

Decent Essays

Emma Li
Mrs. Gahagan
Period 3
30 October 2017
Secrets and Style of Sir Poe Gothic fiction is the strange, dark, spooky, and supernatural writing style loved by readers of all ages. Most of the stories written in the Gothic style were centered in the gothic medieval period. Several renowned books like The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo were written in this style. Edgar Allan Poe was one well known Gothic writer and poet from the early eighteen hundreds; he was especially famous for his tales of mystery and macabre. A popular dark short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and one of his first and most famous poems, “The Raven,” are no exception. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story of murder …show more content…

Therefore, the metaphors used by Poe supports the sinister mood of the short story and poem. Diction, or word choice, is also used in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” to indirectly characterize the narrator and speaker. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” upon spying the vulture eye of the old man, depicts it as “all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over [the eye] that chilled the very marrow in [his] bones” (Poe 355). Through using the word “hideous” and the phrase “chilled the very marrow in [his] bones”, the narrator blatantly reveals his wariness towards the old man’s eye. The narrator feels threatened by the eye, which indirectly characterizes him as insane because it is unnatural for people to feel terrorized by appearance. Additionally, the speaker in “The Raven” claims that while he dreams about Lenore in the presence of the raven, “the air [grows] denser, perfumed from an unseen censer / Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor” (Poe 79, 80). “Censer” and “Seraphim” are two words that express the speaker’s longing for Lenore, as a censer is a covered incense burner usually used in funerals, and Seraphim is an order of angels from Heaven. The reference to angels and funerals indirectly characterizes the speaker as

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