‘I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour, I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime, I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.’
Explaining the way the man reacted by not moving a muscle while the old man sits up in bed just listening for the slightest noise adds to the suspense because it makes the reader wonder what would happen if the old man saw the man and wonder what will happen next?
There is a lot of suspense right at the end of the story, the man has killed the old man and places chairs directly on top of where the old man was buried for the police officers to sit on.
‘I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.’
At first it doesn’t seem to hold that much suspense but in fact with the mans cockiness comes suspense because he placed the chairs directly on top of the mans corpse.
Throughout the story Edgar Alan Poe portrays the man as a madman. This is the first impression the Edgar Alan Poe tries to create.
‘I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?’
Here he’s trying to state that he isn’t a madman when in fact it creates the impression that he is indeed a mad man. Later in the story he gives proof that he has indeed gone mad when he starts to hear the dead mans beating heart.
‘It grew louder --louder --louder! And ……… And now --again! --hark! Louder! Louder! Louder! Louder!
The man killed the old man but still claims to be able to hear the old mans heart beating proving his madness. The heart beat is really his subconscious.
Even though there is only one death throughout the story the one death is more powerful than if there had been lots of deaths. The story starts by building up suspense about the ‘vulture’ eye and how the man despises the eye. It then builds up to show the man as a stalker of the old man and his eye. Finally it reveals the death of the old man.
‘In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead.’
Here is where the old man was killed. When the man killed him and even after he showed no remorse for him. No sympathy. No regret. All he could do was smile as he killed him showing him as an evil madman.
In conclusion the story Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Alan Poe fulfilled my expectations of a typical horror story. It included suspense and drama, murder and paranoia. It played on the fact that the eye was evil and gave a brilliant imagery of the eye all the way through the story but at the same time portraying the old man as a frail innocent old man sucked into the warped mind of the man obsessed with the vulture eye.
