Blog Entry 1: Edgar Allen Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart"

1 September 2014

     "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about a man who lets his own guilt get the best of him after murdering an older man and ends up admitting to the crime to the authorities as a result. One quote from this story that I found to be especially interesting and worth analyzing can be found on page 2: "Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room". At this point in the story, the narrator is discussing the old man's apprehension, as he seems to know that there is an intruder in his bedroom. I found this quote worth analyzing for many reasons, and I think that it is a great portrayal of the unstable mind of the narrator and foreshadows the disturbing acts to follow.

     It was quite prominent to me how the word "Death" in this sentence is capitalized, as if the old man's inevitable coming death was the responsibility of death itself, some dark, ominous figure who stalks its victims on its own. This is obviously not the case; the narrator is the one responsible for the old man's death, but his mindset of the action of the old man dying being something separate from himself is interesting because in reality there is such a small disparity between the two. The narrator speaks of death as if it is something he can also observe himself, when he is actually the one causing death to be brought upon the older man. This nonsensical view of death as a force that cannot be stopped further proves that the narrator is "mad", a fact that he works so hard to disprove throughout the story until his inevitable and rapid mental decline. 

     Another aspect of this sentence that I found to be interesting was the use of the word "mournful" when describing the presence that the older man feels in his bedroom. The term "mournful" usually has a sad, disconsolate connotation, as if whatever is occurring within the context of that part of the text is troublesome for the narrator to even write about. Once again, the narrator at this point is portraying a different kind of emotion than he is actually feeling, showing that there is some instability within his mind. Assuming that he is not mourning the oncoming death of this man, seeing as though he is the one causing it, the use of that term seems to be a bit ironic, although it could be interpreted as the old man mourning what he knows now to be his inevitable death. Overall, this quote has a very negative and ominous tone, and definitely sets the stage in the reader's mind to allow them to predict what may follow in the text.