Fear And Obsession In Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allen Poe

Fear can be helpful in many ways. It can help by offering restraint and it can suppress irrational acts. An example is driving past the red light. As the light turns from yellow to red you think of stepping on it, but the fear of receiving a ticket stops you from speeding. Fear can be useful, but it can also be damaging. A disadvantage of fear is that it can lead to paranoia which then leads to obsession. Obsession is dangerous as seen in the three stories written by Edgar Allen Poe. The first story “Tell-Tale Heart”, it's about a man that obsesses about a creepy eye. The “Pit and the Pendulum” is about a man that’s stuck in a prison and is faced with many extremely difficult obstacles. Finally, the “Masque of Red Death” is about a prince named Prince Prospero that fears the red death and so locks himself and his friends from the outside world. In the all of the three stories, Poe uses symbol, irony, and imagery to inform us on how fear can deceive your rational thoughts and the outcome of the trick.

In the stories “Tell-Tale Heart” and “Masque of Red Death”, there are many significant symbols. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” an important symbol is the old man’s eye. The narrator obsessed with the eye because he thought the
In the story, the walls and the pendulum were described in great detail to help us imagine what the character had to go through. Poe writes, “The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and others more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls” (67). Poe describes the drawing on the walls to show us of how the demons on the wall are supposed to make the narrator feel hopeless, because all around the him is demons. Even though the demons were meant to bring the narrator down he still fought on to escape the pit. Poe uses this as an example to not give up hope even if the obstacle seems be to big to break