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Essay / Edgar Allan Poe's use of literary techniques in The Tell-tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart, presents a disturbing mediation on individual pride through the moral ambiguity of the narrator and his inability to perceive the horror within one's own. hideous heart.” As Poe strips the poignant story of superfluous details, his use of dramatic irony facilitates the observation of the impermanence of reason and the inner conflict that permeates the subconscious, making individuals complicit in a tumultuous existence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Poe's often haphazard and casual syntax acts as an embodiment of the narrator's precarious sanity, described ironically to the reader as the narrator remains dismissively unconscious. At the beginning, the Narrator's rhetorical questioning "why do you say I'm crazy?" » succeeding in his statement of being "very, very terribly nervous" establishes the narrator's inner turmoil and psychological contradictions, stating that he is extremely uncomfortable while insisting on being perceived as sane while Poe encourages the reader to recognize the erratic state of the narrator before the story is told. . Likewise, the repetition of the exclamation in statements: “I went to work!” ", "oh, so gently! physically, it involves a frenzied sense of excitement and mad pride as the narrator attempts to align his sanity with the meticulous, enthusiastic detail in which the story is told, but cannot comprehend that the content of revelations also horrible betrays the sanity exhibition he vehemently attempts. establish. Furthermore, as the narrator becomes exasperated in the presence of the police, the short and jarring statements “I frothed – I raved – I swore!” “God Almighty!” » “Listen! Stronger, stronger, stronger! disintegrates the old calm and collected narrative of the story, physically describing the speaker's degradation into madness, guilt, and tumultuous inner conflict. Through this dramatic irony, Poe suspends the narrator in a description of ambiguous reason and frenzied capacity, suggesting that his astute tale is only the beginning of the descent into hell of his own psyche, the one from which he cannot recognize himself. Notion, Poe ironically fills his narrator's perceptions with distorted features to establish a clear dichotomy between recognizable reason and the storyteller's madness. Although the narrator attempts to divulge that the old man's "evil eye" motivated his heinous act, he earlier countered that "the object did not exist, the passion did not exist", suggesting that he had fabricated a motive in a vain attempt to justify his immoral actions and further construct a false representation of psychological stability. Through the alliterative reference to the "evil eye", the proper noun, the titular connotations of this exaggeration attempt to associate the eye with great danger and as a being entirely distinct from man, thereby easing the burden of the guilt that one would associate with murder. However, the narrator fails to understand that the old man's eye is a facet of his own identity that cannot be perversely dismembered from his being, thus escaping the instability of the thought process and rationality of the narrator. Likewise, the comic "beat of the old man's heart" described as "increasing the narrator's fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier's courage" absurdly portrays the narrator's insidious desire as a courageous motivation, aligning the murder with the valiant effort of a soldier charged with.