A criticism to Edgar Allan Poe’s tell-tale heart in a classroom setting

Literature classes both for Junior and Senior High school incorporate understanding and critiquing notable literary pieces such that of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe has demonstrated his mastery of detective genre.

In most if not all of his works has the subject matter of omission of a crime and the investigation by authorities. The characters are projected as either idolized victims or typical assailants and perpetrators. This style and mastery is demonstrated in one of his stories Tell-Tale Heart. In the story he had as subject matter a perfect crime where the able to accomplish and commit the crime of murder and was able to temporarily get away from it since he was able to hide the remains of the old man before the policemen barged into the old man’s house. Notable in his story Linguistically is his use of conversation if not dialogue between law enforcing authorities and perpetrator or accomplice with such conversation structured in a way that perpetrator’s successful commission of the crime is projected. Particularly linguistic is his use of first person(I, my) singular to point out the perpetrator’s justification of his commission and use of third person to project victim’s fault(the old man.., the policemen, it was his eye…). In Tell-Tale Heart’s concealment can be seen in the line:“...One of the neighbors had heard the old man’s cry and had called the police…I asked the policemen to come in. The cry I said was my own, in a dream. The old man I said was away; he had gone to visit a friend in the country….My easy, quite manner made the policemen believe my story…”One could also observe conveniently Edgar Allan Poe’s use of negative sentences as departing statements to end the story. In the same story, he ended the story with the sentence:“Yes! Yes! I killed him….But why does his heart not stop beating? Why does it not stop!?”Moreover, the use of contradiction projects as well justification of the protagonist’s commission of crime. This can be noticed in the opening line setting the mood of the story and in the succeeding line or paragraph: “Yes I have been ill. But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind…can’t you see I have full control of my mind…

“I did not hate the old man;…I did not want his money. I think it was his eye. It was like the eye of a vulture…”(statement is repeated)Finally, from this latter passage, one can see parallel repetition with the first two sentences (I did not…, I did not…) both negative sentences expressing the perpetrators real intention and the last two sentences (it was…, it was…) both affirmative declarative sentences expressing the provocation in perpetrator’s self. By Cristina A. Chacapna