The Mystic World through Poe’s

The existence of literature is to express humanity and human emotions in or through words. People can feel true and actual human nature through literature. Give a better opening statement about the wonders of literature… Furthermore, people can touch the mystic (not appropriate term) world that is beyond their imaginations by reading literary works. The Tell- Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe is a good example for people to look deeply into humanity (why is it a good example?).

The short story was first published in James Russell Lowell’s The Pioneer in January, 1843, and it appeared again in The Broadway Journal on August 26, 1845. The story describes the emotions and thoughts of a mad man who killed the old man with the “evil eye”. The story is plain and simple, yet it is able to arouse and pique the reader’s interest because of the use of symbols and excellent prose.  By reading the story, we could see the dark side of humanity, and how it forms in the human mind

The setting of the story covers a period of eight days. The most important action occurs each night around midnight. The location is in the old man’s house and the narrator is the caretaker. The whole story happened and revolved around the old man’s house.  The time frame and the location that Poe established for the story were simple, which further enhanced the shocking images of the characters and its mystery

The characters of the story were the nameless and sexless narrator, the old man, and the police. The narrator is nameless and sexless because Poe used “I” and “me” to refer to the character. “Most readers assumed that the narrator is a male because of a male author using a first person point of view.” (give the article title or author and year format, not the URL Available: http:// www.poedecoder.com/essays/ttheart/#characters). However, I think the narrator is a male, because he is strong enough to kill the old man and also because he was able to live with an old man and be his caretaker in the19th century (substantiate more).

Poe writes the story in the first person point of view and makes it easy for readers to understand every aspect of the narrator’s mind. Our imaginations are dragged through the narrator’s eyes and we hold our breath as we continue to read the  exciting plot of the murder. It seems that we are just right in the scene watching the narrator killing the old man!

Symbols can be found in the story (what other symbols?). The major symbol is the heartbeat. The narrator believes that the sound of the heartbeat is from the old man’s heart, but it is actually from his own heart. The narrator’s fear of being caught by the police and his guilt of killing the old man make him hear the sound of the heartbeat steadily. The old man’s “eye of a vulture”- “a pale-blue eye” is the symbol of evil and represents the narrator’s fears.

Every time the narrator gazed at the “evil eye”, his blood ran cold. I think it’s because that the eye reveals the narrator’s evil, dark, and ugly side of his mind so that he wants to kill the old man to get rid of the eye forever (sentence is running in circles). In this way, he can get rid of the fact that he is truly mad and his mind is ugly and evil (how?).

The theme of The Tell- Tale Heart is that human nature is a delicate balance of light and dark or good and evil. Most people can keep their balance at most times (give more examples or situations). However, the balance of human nature can be destroyed and the dark side can be aroused by some indefinite (not appropriate term) reasons. Different people view things differently. The reasons that destroy the balance of people’s minds may be different (redundant) In The Tell- Tale Heart, the narrator’s evilness was awakened by the old man’s “vulture eye”- which really just revealed his own evil.

The Tell- Tale Heart is one of my favorite short stories. I read the story for the first time during my first year in the university. When I finished the story, I was really touched and shocked by it. I love the story for its fine descriptions of human nature, the suspicious plot of a murder, and the mystic atmosphere of the story.

Every time I read the story, I  imagine myself to be right there in the scene and  to be aware of the strange atmosphere of the story so I can observe a different side of humanity. I can be in another world for a while to experience fear and guilt.  Without a doubt , Poe really is a master at making people experience and explore man’s complexities and emotions. By his stories, one can know more about humanity and the evil that exists in human nature.

Literature reveals real humanity and true lives of people. By reading these masterpieces, I understand more about people and experience different sides of the human minds, such as good and evil, or beauty and ugliness. After all, these different and opposite things do exist side by side in our real world and we all have to learn to realize and take them normally and correctly so that we can view our lives in the right and perspective point of view to fulfill our life (I can’t seem to understand what you mean in this paragraph).

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell- Tale Heart”. , 1843.

List the cited materials like the url you gave, use proper format