In the story a Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Describe what the author and
ID: 3495466 • Letter: I
Question
In the story a Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Describe what the author and the story gain from choosing to have this particular narrator tell the story rather than another character. In particular, comment on how this narrator helps to convey the story's main idea. 200 words. In the story a Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Describe what the author and the story gain from choosing to have this particular narrator tell the story rather than another character. In particular, comment on how this narrator helps to convey the story's main idea. 200 words.Explanation / Answer
The narrator in this story tries to rationalise and justify his behaviour if stalking his victim. He terrorises the old man before killing him as the story proceeds. The narrator senses the things that people normally cannot. He becomes psychotically obbsessed with the old man's strange eye and finally kills him. His heightened sensitivity makes him obbsessed. For 7 nights he develops friendship with the old man before killing him on the eighth day inside his closed room in darkness.
Thought-out the story the narrator tries to prove his sanity. When the old man was dying, the narrator thinks he is hearing his own increased heart beat which kept growing louder. Later he burried the corpse in the same house. When he again hears the same heartbeat he becomes distressed and finally confesses his crime because he could not handle his own emotional and psychological pressure of having killed someone. Thus the main idea of the story is revealed how deceiving a human mind can be which paves the path of its own destruction.