Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, publicist, writer, and cultural critic in the United States of America. Poe’s poems and short story collections, notably his narratives of mystery and the grotesque, are his most notable works. He is generally considered a significant character in both American Romanticism and American literary culture. Edgar Poe was an innovator in the field of the short story writing style in the United States of America.
He is often regarded as the creator of the investigative story genre, as well as a substantial contribution to the developing science fiction sphere. Edgar Poe’s short novel The Tell-Tale Heart was originally written and published in January 1843 in James Russell Lowell’s collection “The Pioneer.” It is one of Poe’s most famous brief tales that is frequently regarded as a masterpiece of the Gothic fiction category. The Tell-Tale Heart is written in a tone of anxiety and fear, and its plot emphasizes several important social aspects of life associated with the commission of a crime.
Main body
Poe is considered the first famous American author to support himself with resources solely via his writings, leading to a financially tough life and work. He focused many of his texts on issues that appealed to a large audience. For that purpose, Edgar Poe regularly incorporated parts of common pseudoscience like physiognomy and phrenology in his stories. He despised scathing satire and allegory, yet he thought there should be a layer of meaning behind the top of the literature. Poe’s writings inspired literature, culture, and specialist subjects, for instance, cosmology and encryption.
In general, the plot of The Tell-Tale Heart is based on the Pyramids of Freytag. It is divided into three sections, and the first is the author attempting to justify his rationality and sanity by recounting a prior event. This section comprises eight days, seven of which the storyteller peers inside the old man’s room while he naps. The plot’s second act revolves around murdering, chopping, and burying the old human’s body. The third segment depicts the arrival of the policemen and the narrator confessing his guilt to them. The storyline includes all of the essential elements of good writing: the beginning, the struggle, the complication, the peak, the anxiety, the resolution, and the ending.
The original problem stems from the narrator’s attempt to demonstrate and establish his sanity by recounting a story. The struggle is evident when the author visits the old man’s chamber every night for a week in order to accomplish his crime. It is not possible for him to murder the elderly gentleman while he’s asleep since the old man’s “eye” is the narrator’s concern. The plot’s complexity is that if the old gentleman does not start waking up, he will not be murdered for weeks.
The book’s peak moment involves killing the old man, and the author’s calm and rational attitude when the authorities arrive adds to the tension. The anticipation part is at an all-time high as he leads them into the home and fearlessly leads them to the slain old person’s bedroom. The writing’s conclusion begins when the sound the storyteller is hearing becomes louder to the point that he can no longer bear it. In order to alleviate the life and hope the noise will disappear, he tells the detectives about his crime.
The Tell-Tale Heart is composed in the Gothic fantasy genre, which focuses on punishment, blame, and the narrator’s psychology. The story is disorganized, and the lines have an odd impact, to the point that each one might generate a dispute. An implied mystery is present throughout the book that causes the audience to interpret occurrences in unexpected ways, making the work an example of an unpredictable storyline (Abu Jweid 12).
Poe constructs his plot’s actions so that the reader becomes skeptical, and he also allows the audience to evaluate and reinterpret the narrative structure (Abu Jweid 12). The author is pathetic and probably physically unwell and, moreover, has an anxious and sorrowful tone. The storyteller appears to have had a difficult upbringing, background, and lifestyle, which is likely to worsen with the crime and following confession.
The tale is built around various topics and subtopics, all of which are described in detail in the storyline. The first subject asserts that every individual has a deviant and wicked component in their psyche. It is another personality that drives him to commit crimes for no apparent purpose or motivation. The topic of crime disclosure suggests that the author’s intense dread of being discovered was the driving force behind his decision to reveal his murder. The overarching concept of crime and punishment emphasizes that everyone who breaks the law and tries to conceal it will be penalized. The narrative is centered on insanity and the author’s insistence on following the technique he used to carry out his murderous scheme.
Summary
To summarize, The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The plot of the writing is divided into three sections, each of which leads to a description or illustrates events associated with the act of murder on the part of the narrator. The Tell-Tale Heart is composed in the Gothic fantasy genre, which focuses on punishment, blame, and the narrator’s anxious and sorrowful psychology. The book is built around a variety of social themes, the key notion of which is the concept of crime and punishment. It emphasizes that everyone who breaks the law, commits a crime, and tries to conceal it, will not avoid a penalty.
Work Cited
Abu Jweid, Abdalhadi. “Fear Mechanism in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart”. Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 21, no. 2, 2020, pp. 12-18.