Hiding it All

Pg 141 ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’

“His eye would trouble me no more. If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arm and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited it all between the scantlings.”

            Only a mad man could kill an innocent old man, chop up his limbs and hide them away without the slightest bit of remorse for it. In fact, Poe took great pride in his sick deed. Poe’s dark, gothic writing style allows us readers to fully engage into the story and feel absolute disgust in the narrator for his gruesome deeds. I felt as if I was one of the other neighbours in the story, I was very involved and his words developed the mood so cleverly giving such a dark atmosphere. Poe’s words help transform a crazy man with an idea, into a man who is a true outsider; someone who does not see the world in the same light as the common person. No other writer can describe how the narrator dismembered and hid the body with such clarity and precision. Poe truly is the best at what he does. Edgar Allen Poe’s unique style of writing, so passionate and so dark is the quality that brings his mysterious writing to life. He even is able to produce humour through irony. The narrator is clearly mad, yet he says he is not and he even justifies his crime by saying he was “wise and precautious”. Poe had many demons in him, and they were shown throughout the gruesomeness of the quote.