The Tell Tale Heart

You creep inside the pitch black room. As you lurk inside you take out your lantern. A thin stream of light shines right into the “evil eye.” In the story "The Tell Tale Heart", by Edgar Allen Poe there is a young man being tormented by the eye. Many important aspects of the story are the characters, the mode of literature, and the symbolism.

The characters in the story are the narrator and the old man. The narrator is the main character in this story. He feels like he is being tormented by this old man’s “evil eye.” Throughout the story the narrator keeps saying that he isn’t a mad man, but as the story goes on we find out that he is because he kills the old man. Even though the narrator felt that he did good by killing the old man, I feel that the old man did nothing at all.

Even though the characters are interesting so is the mode of literature. The mode of literature for this story is Irony. I believe that it is an Irony story because some aspects of the story were unrealistic. A part that was very unrealistic in the story was when the narrator admitted that he killed the old man. “…it is the beating of his hideous heart.(pg. 385)” You know this part of the story is unrealistic because a dead man’s dead heart can’t beat.

Another important part of this story is the symbolism. A large part of the symbolism in the story was the “evil eye.” Many people believe that an evil eye could mean disapproval, jealousy, malice from that person and could cause them great harm. Another symbol is darkness. Darkness could also mean death for people. Going down stairs is another symbol used in the story. Down is a symbol because it’s like you are being tortured or going to die.

The characters, mode of literature, and the symbolism are very important to the story. Edgar Allen Poe could have written this story for many reasons. Maybe he had an unhappy childhood growing up, or maybe that he was just a troubled person. He may have been trying to show that there is more to the story than just this crazy man killing an old man and that there may actually be a large reason for the story.