Literary Devices In Tell Tale Heart

Have you ever had the opportunity to look at life through the eyes of a modern day mad man? Luckily, we have Poe’s Telltale Heart as our gateway to insanity. We’re thrown straight into the threshold of cognitive unrest. Our lips pursed at an elderly man with an unholy “birth defect”. Our eyes are those of an unnamed character, (who’s already bat poop insane), who is then thrown off the metaphorical edge because of an old man’s evil eye. Using writing techniques like tone, figurative writing, and personification, we start to obtain perspective for the mentally insane. Although Telltale Heart is a short story, the plot of it is present and strong. The development is in the motive, not the character, because the main character is just as deranged in the beginning as he is in the end. He may say he’s mentally sound, but it’s a load of garbage; never trust a murder. Taking baby steps may be your way of attacking things, but not for our favorite psychotic manhunter. This rapid plunge into action created a sense of urgency; that the odds were both dire and necessary. For example, “... I had to kill; it was the eye, his evil eye.” (Poe, 65). As deadly as this passage sounds, it serves an actual
Tone is everything in a story, and this passage brings out a sinister one. Death comes early for some people, and the old man didn’t get to pick his poison. You wouldn’t want to read a story with a lackluster tone, heck, even upbeat and happy. It’s human nature to want to see or read about other people’s suffering, not your own. “The old man gave a loud cry of fear as I fell upon him and held the bedsheets tightly over his head. I smiled as I felt success was near.” Now I don’t know if smiling after brutally murdering somebody is normal, (I obviously wouldn’t know). Maybe death secretly loves his job and smiles after claiming the due souls of people; again, I wouldn’t know