Thoughts on ´The Tell-Tale Heart´ by Edgar Allan Poe.
´The Tell-Tale Heart´ is perhaps one of Edgar Allan Poeś most notorious and widely known short stories. With its chilling storyline and an, even more, spine-chilling end, it is almost impossible to forget. It tells the story of how the narrator killed an old man with a glass eye that the narrator describes as a "vulture eye". As the narrator describes the murder, with a disturbing sense of pride, he also tries desperately to convince the reader of how sane he is. This gives you the chilling feeling that the narrator currently addressing you is a complete psychopath and a very dangerous person. The narrator describes in chilling detail how he visited the man every night at midnight in the seven days leading up to his death. It is the kind of story that leaves you lying await at night, terrified to close your eyes. That is certainly how I felt after reading it for the first time.
One of the things that makes this story so disturbing is the amount of glee the narrator expresses while recounting the events leading up to and during the murder. The narrator´s description of how watched the old man every night in the seven days before his death was so spine-chilling it almost kept me up all night. I kept imagining that someone was hiding in the closet watching me as I slept. Edgar Allan Poe has the amazing ability to make a story that, compared to some of the other things I´ve read, is quite mild, seem like the most frightening thing in the world. The horror I felt at being in the mind of a cold-blooded killer is almost indescribable. The narrator goes on to boast about how nice he had been to the old man in the days leading up to his death. This imbued a sense of paranoia in me that anyone who was being unusually nice to me was actually planning to murder me and cut me into little pieces. The world is filled with all kinds of people and they are not always what they appear to be. People that might seem perfectly nice at first, like the narrator, could turn out to be terrible people. We see this all the time in our world, where people get murdered by people they were close to, who they trusted.
Perhaps the scariest thing about the Tell-Tale Heart is its repeated emphasis on the old man´s heartbeat. just before the narrator killed the old man he swore he could hear the old man´s heart beating. He said that it made him angry just like a drum stimulating a soldier into courage. This made me feel even more uncomfortable, the comparison to a soldier being courageous as if it is a noble act to kill an innocent human being. This once again highlights how twisted and insane the narrator is, adding to the disturbing atmosphere of the entire story. it made me feel almost wrong just reading it like I was the one doing something so monstrous. This also made me think about how I can sometimes hear my own heart beating when Iḿ really scared. As I read this story I almost felt like I could hear a heartbeat too. This made the story feel more real to me and left me incredibly perturbed and slightly shaky.
It amazed me how even though the focus of the story wasn´t the murder, it still had such a huge impact on me. There aren´t many murder stories that focus on the before and after from the point of view of the murderer. It was nice to get a look inside the head of someone who had just killed and someone who was about to kill. Even though it made me feel very uncomfortable, the point of view also pulled me into the story and made it more gripping. I couldn´t look away, even when I wanted to, and that is what made this short story so unique.
One of the things that makes this story so disturbing is the amount of glee the narrator expresses while recounting the events leading up to and during the murder. The narrator´s description of how watched the old man every night in the seven days before his death was so spine-chilling it almost kept me up all night. I kept imagining that someone was hiding in the closet watching me as I slept. Edgar Allan Poe has the amazing ability to make a story that, compared to some of the other things I´ve read, is quite mild, seem like the most frightening thing in the world. The horror I felt at being in the mind of a cold-blooded killer is almost indescribable. The narrator goes on to boast about how nice he had been to the old man in the days leading up to his death. This imbued a sense of paranoia in me that anyone who was being unusually nice to me was actually planning to murder me and cut me into little pieces. The world is filled with all kinds of people and they are not always what they appear to be. People that might seem perfectly nice at first, like the narrator, could turn out to be terrible people. We see this all the time in our world, where people get murdered by people they were close to, who they trusted.
Perhaps the scariest thing about the Tell-Tale Heart is its repeated emphasis on the old man´s heartbeat. just before the narrator killed the old man he swore he could hear the old man´s heart beating. He said that it made him angry just like a drum stimulating a soldier into courage. This made me feel even more uncomfortable, the comparison to a soldier being courageous as if it is a noble act to kill an innocent human being. This once again highlights how twisted and insane the narrator is, adding to the disturbing atmosphere of the entire story. it made me feel almost wrong just reading it like I was the one doing something so monstrous. This also made me think about how I can sometimes hear my own heart beating when Iḿ really scared. As I read this story I almost felt like I could hear a heartbeat too. This made the story feel more real to me and left me incredibly perturbed and slightly shaky.
It amazed me how even though the focus of the story wasn´t the murder, it still had such a huge impact on me. There aren´t many murder stories that focus on the before and after from the point of view of the murderer. It was nice to get a look inside the head of someone who had just killed and someone who was about to kill. Even though it made me feel very uncomfortable, the point of view also pulled me into the story and made it more gripping. I couldn´t look away, even when I wanted to, and that is what made this short story so unique.
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