With The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe drops us straight into the mind of a madman who murders an old man and then does a terrible job of covering up the crime.
Read the opening paragraph, and pay attention to the emotional state of the narrator.
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.
One thing you might notice is that the narrator is really intense. He spends a lot of time telling us that he’s not mad, but he does it in a way that makes us pretty sure he is mad.
In this lesson we’re going to look at all the little language tricks Poe uses to create this feeling of intensity.
