"The Tell-Tale Heart"

     Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Tell-Tale Heart", is a story about an insane man who kills an innocent man staying at his home. When he finally kills the man, he finds that karma has found him immediately and has driven him more mad than he already is. This story depicts two main characters- the old man with pale blue eyes and the man who murders this innocent man. But this story has a hero and a villian. The villian or the antagonist is the man who murders the pale blue-eyed man and the protagonists are the police officers who seek to investigate any wrong doing in the neighborhood. The police officers get a complaint from one of the neighbors about signs of stuggle from the murderers house and because of their presence and their investigation, the antagonist goes mad and he is forced to confess his wrongful actions to the police officers.

     Murder, is what creates the plot in Edgar Allan Poe's story. There is much conflict in the story and within the characters. The first conflict is the man wanting to kill the innocent pale blue-eyed man. The eye drives him mad, that even with no harm done, he murders the innocent poor man and burries him under the floor boards. Another conflict, is the conflict that the murder must go through within himself. He does not find himself insane, yet he kills a man, by planning his strategy out carefully and watches the old man sleep every night. He consumes all his energy into killing the man and the pale blue-eye consumes his mind. He becomes obsessed and he does not realize the conflict within himself. After he kills the man, he thought he was free, but only left to know that the heart of the man is driving him wild. The old man is dead and burried under the floor boards of the home, yet even when the deed is done, he finds his mind comsumed with the old man, except this time, it isn't his eye, but his heart. The beating of the heart is all that he hears and it drives him wild. This conflict is the conflict he has with himself and with his mind. His mind takes control of what he does which makes him insane, and an uncontrollable conflict that he can not fix.

     Poe's short story is a unique and timeless story that always leaves with me chills everytime I read 
"The Tell-Tale Heart". Besides his descriptions and imagery, the diction of the writer sets up the plot of the story. And with the clever uses of imagery and the choices of words, the writer is able to successful create a rising action that builds to the story's climax. But the story, has 2 climax. The first climax is Day 8, the night of the murder. The author sets up his audience and starts the story with the two main characters and sets up the audience to picture that this man has been stalking the victim for 7 days which leaves the last day of the murder, when the murderer is like a predator after its prey. The murder occurs and this is what the audience is set up to read and imagine about. The second climax is towards the end. This story is truley timeless because how the story is left at the end. Although the climax of the story already occurred in the beginning of the story, the audience is set up to read more while the story rises up towards the end. When the Police officers come to investigate and search the house, the murderer is left feeling uneasy and looking pale as he goes mad when he hears a sound that follows him. This climax occurs when he can not keep his secret to himself but reveals to the police officers who suspected nothing, that he indeed kill the man and showed where the victim's remains are left. This climax not only occurs at the end and lets the audience read, hanging on to every last word of the story, but leaves the audience having read the story with 2 climax that only will leave them with no questions but with words that leave with images of the story in their minds. Towards the end, the audience gets their revenge by having the "villian" of the story get their revenge by revealing his murderous deeds to the police, when in fact the dead  man was the one that got his revenge and can now rest in peace.