How Effective Is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart as a Gothic Horror Essay

How effective is Edgar Allan Poes The Tell floor Heart as a mediaeval abomination? The short layer The Tell Tale Heart was create verb only ify by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. It is written in first off person in the past tense. The storey blusterings in the middle of what seems to be a dialogue between the fibber and his audience. We hire that the fibber looks aft(prenominal) an senior reality with a pale game eye he describes it as beness like that of a pirana. We are t superannuated that the eye disturbs the cashier, for this reason the vote counter decides to take the mature hu serviceman races life.During the s change surface days to arrest with the performance, the verbalizer is exceedingly variety to his victim in the day time. However, in the night he would pussyfoot into the grizzly mans live awaiting the appearance of the Evil eye. On the eighth night the disused man wakes up, the eye causes the storyteller to dead lash stunned and kill the o ld man. He dismembers the corpse and stores it infra the floor boards. The police visit his house due to a screeching visualized by a neighbour. At first he is console and real of himself, scarce becomes increasingly nervous and seems to go insane.The narrator admits his plague to the police even though they arrive no apparent suspicions. The blue(a) and mysterious setting of Poes story is typical of a chivalric horror. We learn from early on that the narrator is wreakuall(a)y the villain. He speaks instantly to the reader, creating a personal bond which we do not share with each other personality. We know genuinely little more or less the victim which prevents us from empathising with him later on in the story. The narrator is a truly complicated character, he seems to have a belie view of the world just about him and we assume him to be mad.Madness is a popular etymon of gothic horror and one of the reasons the story is so effective is because of the erratic behavior in which it is told. Some events of the tale seem to be unrealistic and this adds whodunit to the horror. The main event of the tale, the murder, is to a fault common in the gothic horror genre. Because of these links to a general tale of gothic horror, I conceptualise Edgar Allan Poes The Tell Tale Heart is in truth effective. Within the first paragraph I get the tactile sensation that the speaker is mad and disturbed. He accuses the audience of mentation he is mad by saying wherefore depart you say that I am mad? This causes us to query his sanity because he has no reason to say this.Now that the theme of madness is fresh in our heads, as we continue to read the story the thinker that the narrator is mad comes to mind easily. I get the theory that he is insecure and possibly knows he is insane because hes trying to persuade us otherwise. The narrator speaks at a very fast pace using disjointed sentences such as, True -nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous The vast amount of punctuation makes this sentence goosey and slow to read causing you to trip over what he is saying.This stylus of dialogue reflects his frantic personality. Also, the narrators reprobate view of things reinforces the horror genre. We assume that he has a distorted view because he expresses his love for the old man yet soon explains his wishes to take his life. There is a paradox in this situation and shows us how scrambled his thoughts are. The idea of the narrator not thinking straight and being irrational excites the audience. It also adds to the effectualness of the gothic horror. When I first read The Tell Tale Heart I mat eager to find out the narrators later actions.This backs up my earlier idea of both the story and narrator being extremely effective as a gothic horror. When the speaker tells us he is going to take the old mans life our suasion of him changes. We bewilder to realise that he could be evil and cold seeted. He makes it clear that the old man has never wronged him, this is strange because this would make the altogether reason for murder the mans diseased eye. This seems extremely surplus and cruel this behaviour has a great link with gothic horror. Also, it is scare to think that such a defect could motivate a murder. suspense is built when the narrator rehearses the actions that lead up to the murder for seven nights. This intimates that he is incredibly meticulous. He is a perfectionist and is repeating his intended actions to ensure all runs smoothly. We could also get the impression that he is fearful of killing the old man. I think that he uses the occurrence that the eye isnt open as an excuse not to kill the old man, he says only I form the eye always to be closed and so it was im contingent to do the work. This in fact, is a lie. It would have been oft simpler to murder the old man whilst he was easeing.When the narrator creeps into his room at night he is very slow and quiet. This ensures that he do esnt see the eye and in that respectfore doesnt get enraged. This situation is extremely disturbing, it seems warped that the narrator would have such ruthless(prenominal) ideas but thusly be unable to follow them done. The speaker proudly tells us that in the day he treats the old man with courtesy and respect. In a way, this tells me that he is not a completely evil character still controlled by his impulses. On the other hand it could be perceived as the narrator being a good actor and sly.By being devious and two faced about the situation our opinion of the character changes. This is creepy because he is unpredictable we are never quite sure when things are going to happen. On the eighth night, the narrator was more than unremarkably cautious when entering the old mans room. This immediately raises our suspicions and we begin to question why he has through this. It suggests that for some reason the narrator was apprehensive on that particular night. In the end, his over-cau tiousness was his downfall because he accidently wakes the old man.This is disturbing because now the man is awake we assume that the murder will now take place. In the immediate build up to the murder the narrator describes in great depth what the old man is thinking. This implies to me that the speaker has experienced similar situations and foundation associate with the old man. It also could suggest that the narrators senses have been sharpened, as he tells us in the first paragraph the disease had sharpened my senses. It gives us the idea that the narrator can tell what the old man is thinking.Hints of mind reading sharpen the effect of this gothic horror because they are supernatural. Even though the old man wakes up, the darkness in the building gives the narrator confidence and adds to the effectiveness of the gothic horror. Darkness is often directly linked with evil and also the idea that anything can happen definitely adds to the tension and horror. Also, the possibility that if the old man hadnt woken up, the cycle of the narrator watching the man sleep could have carried on forever is extremely creepy. The fact that we feel for the manslayer more than the victim in this story is very strange.We would expect to shame the old man because we are told he is kind and has never wronged the narrator. The fact he has a strange eye cannot be helped and is through no fault of his own. Although the reader is plain shocked by what happens to the old man, thither is no personal relationship between him and the reader because we know very little about him. I think that Edgar Allen Poe has done this on aspire so that we are more attached to the murderer, which is what makes this story particularly unusual. Moments before the narrator kills the old man, he claims to hear his heart beating.It is impossible to hear someone elses heart beat with human earshot so this is an extremely weird claim. A possible explanation for this is that the narrator is hearing hi s own heart due to nervousness. At the start of the story the narrator says that his hearing is extremely acute due to the disease. The fact that he uses the word disease suggests that this extra hearing is a burden to him. This is straight because he probably doesnt want to hear the old mans impulse. The motif of the heart beat is key to the story because, as shown by the title, it eventually is the undoing of the murderer.The imagery is also very chilling and builds a great tension because we imagine the drumming of the heart in our heads. Eventually the speaker is driven to action by fear and kills the old man. This brutal murder is key to the story being classed as a gothic horror. We realise that he cares if anyone finds out about his deed and begin to understand that he is not genuinely insane otherwise he wouldnt have a perspective of people finding out and being prosecuted. His mind is hard to analyse because he is clever and obviously knows what he is doing. In a way thi s is more horrific that him being insane because it shows deep evil.Even though we can tell that the murderer is intelligent, the way he kills the old man is extremely clumsy. Suffocating him with a heavy bed? Surely there are many less awkward, quieter ways in which he could have killed him? The idea that even an universal item such as a bed can be used a murder weapon is extremely creepy. His method suggests that even though he is meticulous, he didnt think enough about actually killing the old man. The narrators immediate reaction to the murder was that of pleasure this is disturbing. As soon as the deed was done he smiled gaily.Also, the first thing he says is that his eye would squabble me no more its like he is relieved. Normally I would be surprised by this guilt free response but by now it is unsurprising. We are familiar with the narrators need of feeling and conscience. It is questionable why the narrator dismembers the old mans body. It is strange because as far as we know the narrator only has a problem with his eye. It could have been an act of precaution, even though this is unnecessary. perchance the narrator saw it as a challenge? If this is true the idea of the narrator almost playing a game adds to the horror of the tale.We can tell that the narrator never saw the old man as a person, more of an object. Another possible reason could be that, because the narrator is so fastidious, he wanted everything to be neat and compact. This is very perilous though because you would assume it would be a messy job. The narrator says there was no mess could this once again be a distorted view of things? As the narrator goes about his gruesome task (dismembering the body) his relish of voice is very methodical and boastful. This suggests he is calm about the butcherly situation which is horrible.He does not elaborate the gore and we get the impression he is being very clean. We also get the impression that he is proud of his actions and the fact he has caught all the blood and prevented any possible mess. His tone has an effect on the reader it dumbs down how disgusting his act is. He achieves this by not making a big do of the details. The narrators initial response to the arrival of the policemen is fearless and mistily smug. This creates an uneasy mood because we wonder if he will be found out. He bade(s) the gentlemen welcome as if nothing is wrong.He is so confident(p) he sits right above the spot where the old man is buried. This seems to be unnecessarily arrogant, which in the end is his own undoing. His attitude changes when the officers hang nigh for a long time the narrator begins to feel they are plaguey him. A lot of tension builds here because we can sense that something meaning(a) is going to happen through the frantic situation. Tension is built up when the narrator begins to hear the heart beat again and believes the policemen can hear it too. This is physically impossible because the old man is definitely de ad.Maybe its the murderers guilty conscience finally showing through He starts pacing back and forth with heavy strides but the heartbeat doesnt stop. The tension continues to build as he raves and swears. He swung the contain and grated it upon the boards. This is extremely horrific and it is even stranger that the policeman dont seem to pay any attention. I think that his ravings may have been in his head but its hard to understand because of his distorted frantic view of everything. These hints of insanity constantly link back to the effectiveness of this gothic horror.I believe that this is a brilliant short story and I especially like the ending. It is unpredictable and exciting not all of your questions are answered in the story and this makes your carry on thinking after youve finished reading. I wonder what happened to the murderer, and the heart beating still puzzles me. In conclusion, I believe that The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is an subtle gothic horror. It co ntains many key features of a good horror, the biggest being the narrator/murderer who is the mean part of the story. Also, the main event, the murder, definitely is pivatel to the gothic horror genre.