Fear In The Tell Tale Heart

Fear is the backbone of every horror story, and what is more terrifying than a madman who doesn’t recognize his own insanity? The story follows the narrator as he devolves into madness after finally succeeding at killing the old man he lives with because of the old man’s vulture eye which he believes is evil. Poe creates fear and dread in his story with characters and violence and technique. Edgar Allan Poe creates a sensation of fear in the reader with his highly developed characters. There were two characters in this tale, the first being the narrator. The narrator had three salient characteristics such as his highly obsessive nature. This was shown in numerous ways such as repetition, his disturbingly calm away of describing his malicious
Firstly, there is the lack of violence. While a murder is committed there was no fighting, no description of real violence. This lack of violence can be found in the vagueness of the old man’s death itself, “I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him.” (305 Poe). The old man only screams once, there is no struggle, no specification of the method of murder, it does not say if there was a weapon, if he was strangled or smothered. Merely that he was put under the bed and then was found to be stone cold and dead. Also, there is no description of the violence. In most horror movies and books blood is avidly describe, the fear in the victims eyes, the sweat, the soft frailness of flesh and the breaking of bones. However, the only description of blood was brought up when the narrator crowed over his cleverness at cutting up the body over a tub so that the blood could not soak the floor and leave evidence. In fact, he only uses the word cut once, denying the reader the familiar motions of murder with heavy violence and gore. Poe does this again by stripping the moment of any adrenaline, while the narrator gets nervous, barely, when the old man lets out a little scream and that is it. Throughout the murder the narrator is more gleeful and relieved than jittery with adrenaline which unnerves the reader and makes
Poe adds suspense to the tale with different literary devices. He does this firstly by using a first person narrative. This opening line addresses the reader, “True! -- nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 303). Being spoken to by the character catches the reader’s attention and Poe does this multiple times. The story keeps the reader involved and interested with this technique. The story is suspenseful because of how quickly Poe paces it. It is quick and this is good because many readers are not interested in long stories. Clocks are also mentioned frequently, “A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine.” (Poe 304), to help show the movement of time and the countdown to the old man’s death which creates apprehension with the knowledge of nearing annihilation. Poe also uses time to help the reader grasp just how preoccupied and contriving the narrator is by telling the reader the narrator has been hunting the old man’s Evil Eye for eight days and patiently waiting for the opportunity to kill the old man. Poe uses descriptive and sensory words to give his reader apprehension. Poe uses sensory descriptions to make the reader feel more connected to the story and to subtly create the mood of the scene as when the narrator informs the reader “for the hinges creaked” (Poe 303), this