Giuliana Hejtmanek

Mr. Williams
Honors American Literature
May 2, 2015
The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allen Poe is a master of writing disconcerting narratives. Poes secret, and
trademark, to most of them is just making his narrator suffer from some intense and debilitating
psychiatric complication. The eeriness that hauntingly escorts each of Poes characters and
subsequently his personal life sets a mood unlike any psychological thriller one would
encounter today.
In The Tell-Tale Heart, Poes protagonist literally begins his anecdote by aggressively
interrogating with the words why will you say that I am mad? (Poe 1). It is difficult to imagine
a scenario in which a rational person would begin a conversation as such; this immediately sets
the tone of demented peculiarity. Poe often uses a plethora of repulsive descriptions to allow his
haunting eeriness to flourish and marinate. Leading up to the murder of the geriatric for which
his protagonist cared, Poe uses his second paragraphs exposition to gently tease the reader with
anticipation. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine, he notes the
murderers deliberation in stealthily approaching his victim. In his dreadful descriptions, it can
be observed that he almost forgets his setting in order to fulfill his own lust for horror. With this
being said, he is so honed in the art of drawing out descriptions; the reader gets just as easily lost
in his terrible words. As the tale progresses, the reader becomes enthralled by the lunacy-

enthralled by the premeditation of this murder. People will scorn those who kill without taking
into account their own obsession with death.