Poe’s Heart

Ah, Edgar Allen Poe is the master of darkness during the Romantic Era. He led a tragic life. Because of this, he gave the world many good short stories. One the best ones that he is well known for is The Tell Tale Heart. This story refuses to die and is still around to this very day. It just captures the reader into the head of a madman who kills an old man that he is supposed to be taking care of because he hated his eye. There are so many elements to The Tell-Tale Heart. Poe exercises the elements of a short story here.

The Tell-Tale Heart takes the reader into the mind of a man who has fallen off the edge of sanity. The old man’s eye has driven him to the point that killing the old man is the only cure. The reader can tell that the narrator is already crazy. In fact, Poe opens the story with the following lines, “TRUE! Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.” Clearly, the narrator already has most of the puzzle missing in his brain. But yet, he manages to draw the reader to his side after he has committed the crime. By this point, the police show up. To make a long story short, the narrator gives himself up to the police. The reader wants to scream at him, “You would have gotten away with it if you had just kept your big mouth shut!” Poe has involved the read in so closely with narrator that they are almost cheering for him to get away with murder.

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