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The Tell Tail Heart Analysis Essay

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Analysis of the Tell-Tail Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. The short story I chose to analyze is “The Tell-Tail Heart” written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. The setting of this story is in the mid 18th century in an unnamed old man’s house, and mostly of the action happens at night. The story is told by the young companion in first person. The characters in the “Tell-Tail Heart” are the old man, the narrator, and the policeman. The old man, is harmless and highly depends on the younger person, the narrator, who lives with him. As the narrator describes the old man, who seemed to have a poor vision and something is wrong with one of his eye that latter triggers the narrator’s psychotic break. The narrator who is the companion of the old man and care for him, also, the main character of the story. …show more content…

The narrator also on the verge of psychotic break that he persistently denies throughout the story. The narrator and the old man seem to have a good relationship in general. Additional characters are the police man, latter mentioned in the story who come to the house to investigate a reported incident. The story is told by the narrator in first person. He is a psychologically unstable individual living with an old man, “loved” by the narrator; however, there is one problem—the old man has one “vulture eye” that just gives the narrator the chills every time he looks at that one “pale blue eye”. The narrator blames the old man’s eye for all his trouble and decides to kill him. For seven nights, right about midnight he carefully sneaks into the old mans bedroom and staring at him for a while, but the old man always seems to sleep; therefore, his eyes do not threaten the narrator as much. The eight night, the old man suddenly wakes up and opens his eyes while the narrator tries to sneak into his room. This triggers the narrator’s disturbed mind and finally got the strength to execute his plan. He kills the old man, carefully cuts him

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