Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 61 views

    Reader's Response - "The Tell-Tale Heart": O C T O B E R 3, 2 0 1 7

    Uploaded by

    Rhea Tamayo Casuncad
    The narrator murders an old man with an "Evil Eye" that he believes is threatening him. He hides the body under the floorboards. When the police arrive after a neighbor reports a loud yell, the narrator allows them inside and places a chair over the body. He becomes obsessed with thinking he hears the old man's beating heart and believes the police are mocking him for it. By the end, the narrator cracks under the pressure and confesses to the crime. The story examines mental illness and how one can go from confidence to guilt. It also shows how our perceptions are limited by what goes on inside our own minds.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Reader's Response - "The Tell-Tale Heart": O C T O B E R 3, 2 0 1 7

    Uploaded by

    Rhea Tamayo Casuncad
    61 views1 page
    The narrator murders an old man with an "Evil Eye" that he believes is threatening him. He hides the body under the floorboards. When the police arrive after a neighbor reports a loud yell, the narrator allows them inside and places a chair over the body. He becomes obsessed with thinking he hears the old man's beating heart and believes the police are mocking him for it. By the end, the narrator cracks under the pressure and confesses to the crime. The story examines mental illness and how one can go from confidence to guilt. It also shows how our perceptions are limited by what goes on inside our own minds.

    Original Title

    RRC Example

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The narrator murders an old man with an "Evil Eye" that he believes is threatening him. He hides the body under the floorboards. When the police arrive after a neighbor reports a loud yell, the narrator allows them inside and places a chair over the body. He becomes obsessed with thinking he hears the old man's beating heart and believes the police are mocking him for it. By the end, the narrator cracks under the pressure and confesses to the crime. The story examines mental illness and how one can go from confidence to guilt. It also shows how our perceptions are limited by what goes on inside our own minds.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    61 views1 page

    Reader's Response - "The Tell-Tale Heart": O C T O B E R 3, 2 0 1 7

    Uploaded by

    Rhea Tamayo Casuncad
    The narrator murders an old man with an "Evil Eye" that he believes is threatening him. He hides the body under the floorboards. When the police arrive after a neighbor reports a loud yell, the narrator allows them inside and places a chair over the body. He becomes obsessed with thinking he hears the old man's beating heart and believes the police are mocking him for it. By the end, the narrator cracks under the pressure and confesses to the crime. The story examines mental illness and how one can go from confidence to guilt. It also shows how our perceptions are limited by what goes on inside our own minds.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 1

    OCTOBER 3, 2017 

    BY TRACCIII

    Reader’s Response – “The Tell-Tale Heart”

    In his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe throws the reader right into the mind
    of the unknown narrator’s grim endeavor. The speaker in the story tries to convince the reader
    that he is sane, and that no insane person would be able to come up with a plan as elaborately as
    his. There is a man that the narrator describes as having an “Evil Eye” which he’s been watching
    “every night, about midnight” so that he can murder this eye that he believes has been
    threatening him (93, 92). One night, the speaker accidentally wakes the old man and finds the
    eye staring at him, making him angry. The pounding heart of the old man overwhelmed the
    narrator, and he eventually murders the man and places his corpse beneath the floorboards in the
    house. As he is doing this, the police show up at the door because of a tip they received from a
    neighbor about a loud yell. The narrator allows them inside the house and places his chair over
    where the dead body is under the floor. As the police are talking and laughing, the speaker can
    only focus on the beating heart he thinks he hears; he believes the policemen can hear it too and
    that they are making fun of him. Poe ends the story with the narrator cracking under the
    perceived pressure and dramatically pleads guilty to the crime he has committed.

    (1) While reading this story, I immediately fell in love with the way that it is written in such
    realistic first-person perspective. I think Poe did an excellent job in making the narrator sound
    relatable––I think we have all tried to convince people that we are not insane. In this case, we
    find out that the narrator is insane after all and I think he ends up being eaten alive by the guilt he
    feels about the murder he has committed. What also makes it relatable is the anxiety that builds
    within the story. The narrator is obviously struggling with some internal struggles with what is
    real and what is not––leaving the reader in this unsafe place as we are carried through his actions
    with him. Poe starts the story without any type of introduction or explanation as to who the
    speaker is, who the victim is, or even what the “disease” is. The reader is ultimately left to
    wonder about these things, and is also left to wonder––what purpose did Edgar Allan Poe want
    this piece to serve?

    (2) The story ultimately seems to be about mental illness and emotions of pure confidence as
    well as pure guilt. (3)Poe may have written this story to shed light on the struggles of someone
    with mental illness, as he himself struggled with this and alcoholism. The narrator seems to have
    schizophrenia because of the way he sees things that aren’t there (the evil eye) and how he hears
    things that probably aren’t being said (the police making fun of him). I think it’s interesting that
    Poe created this character solely to tear him down; the narrator is quite sure of himself at the
    beginning and pretty much brags about what he is about to do, but then it all spirals downward
    and ends with a massive breakdown of the character we (and he) thought was so “clever” .(4) I
    think the horrifying thing about the story is that we might be so sure of ourselves but can, in an
    instant, be broken down and eaten alive by our imperfections––or that we are limited and biased
    by how we see things in our own heads.

    You might also like