The tell-tale heart
By: Edgar Allan Poe
Setting: room of a house at night
Characters:
The Old Man. The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator, partly because we only see him through the narrator's skewed perspective. ...
The Three Policemen. The three policemen don't really have any characteristics. ...
A Neighbor.
Plot:
Exposition
The narrator is introduced. He wishes to prove his sanity to the readers despite having killed a man over his deformed eye.
Rising Action
Over the next eight days the narrator plots killing the old man to get rid of the "eye". Each night he enters the old man's room with a lantern until he sees the eye.
Climax
Finally, one evening, the old man wakes up and screams. Then the narrator pulls the man off the bed and smothers him with his mattress until he can no longer hear the old man's heart beating.
Falling Action
Summoned by a neighbor, the police arrive, citing that someone reported a scream. The narrator tries to cover up by saying it was him that screamed, and that the old man was out of town.
Resolution
The story ends when the narrator believes he hears a ticking noise that grows louder and louder. He believes that it is the sound of the old man’s heart and confesses to the police.
Theme: the madness and sanity, the pressure of guilt, and the passage of time. Madness and sanity
Mood: madness, horror and psychological terror
Tone: Dreadfully Nervous
Voice: first person
Conflict:
The main conflict is internal - the narrator vs. his own deteriorating mind.
Man vs. Self
The narrator struggles to resist the awful ticking of the dead man's heart that haunts him.
Man vs. Society
The narrator must lie to the police, and cover up the murder.
Man vs. Man
The narrator obsesses over the old man’s eye, eventually killing him for it.
Man vs. Supernatural
the evil eye of the old man according to the narrator.
ending by me…
Another ending I would give is that the narrator was not the culprit, he never was. when he sits down with the cops, they realize they were talking to the wrong person. The narrator thinks that they make a joke on him and that everything had been a lie, but he realizes that he was really in the police station but without being the culprit.
By Valerie Cuello, Step 8 Yellow
