The Tell Tale Heart Essay, Research Paper
In our mordern world, stories affect our life every day, but how do the authors
of these wonders keep the reader exited and focused? This is when the type of
writing called suspense comes along. Suspense is the type of writing skill
authors use to give readers uncertainty about the conclusion of the story. In
some stories, the reader may guess the conclusion before they even finish
reading the introduction, but when authors add suspense in to their master
pieces, the stories become far more interesting and keeps the reader wondering
whether if the conclusion of the story would end like they thought it would, and
therefore keeps the reader wanting to read more. The famous writer Edgar Allan
Poe is an expert in writing suspense related stories and professionally uses
this particular writing style. “The Tell Tale Heart” is just one of Poe’s many
masterpieces that possesses the ability to keep the reader of the story reading
from the beginning of the story to the end. But what exactly is suspense and how
does Edgar Allan Poe use it to manipulate his readers? He used three very
powerful tools, foreshadowing, hampering information, and character development.
And this is exactly how he applied the three skills in to his story.
The author first led suspense in to his story right at the beginning. He
practically started the story by using foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a very
interesting type of literary device. It gives out clues to the reader about the
conclusion of the story. Usually it is the character of the story that gives out
the clues but from time to time it may vary. Because foreshadowing usually comes
in at the very beginning, you may not believe what the character tells you
because you do not exactly know what kind of person he is, and if the character
is some psychopath, obviously you are not going to believe him. Putting
foreshadowing in the beginning of a story is an excellent way to start a story
because that way it keeps the reader’s attention at the beginning of the story.
During the story, Edgar Allan Poe gave the reader much information and
description, but you could tell that he also held back much information. For
example, at the beginning of the story, the man told the reader that he loved
the old man but hates the eye and believes the eye is evil. Normally the reader
would think that all he want to do is to take out the old man’s eye, but who
would have ever knew that he was going to kill the old man, for the man never
wronged him or given him an insult. Yet he would kill the old man just so he
would not get stared by a fake eye. Also towards the end of the story of the
“Tell Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “The officers were satisfied. My
MANNER had convinced them.” Yet at the very end of the story, he wrote the
complete opposite of what he wrote earlier, “They heard! – They suspected! -They
Knew!” As you can see, the author created suspense from another perspective.
In the story “The Tell Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe used character development
to enforce the suspense in his story. As the story unfolds, the main character
turns out to be a psychopath who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Any
reader would know that he is not normal and think he would snap out of it any
second. The first time one read the story one would think that he would stop mid
way trying to kill the old man and reason with his conscious and eventually get
a hold of himself. Because of the crazy character, readers may not exactly
believe what the he say, and eventually questions his/her self about the
foreshadowing.
By now you should have a pretty good idea of how Edgar Allan Poe uses suspense
so well in “The Tell Tale Heart”, and should be able to realize just how well he
hid it among all the details. This is how Poe `magically’ drew the reader’s
attention without even letting them know. He started out by foreshadowing his
story to the readers and let them guess the ending, then slowly plays around
with the reader by taking out some details from his story to let the reader
guess even more. And finally let them wonder all over again about every thing by
letting the reader know the story revolves around an untrustworthy psychopath.
As you can see, “The Tell Tale Heart” truly is a work of wonder, but the real
question is how exactly does Poe come up with such an excellent writing style?
Well, it is still a mystery to many and shall always be.