How does Edgar Allan Poe keep the reader in suspense in “The Tell-Tale Heart”?
The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. In my perspective the story goes like this; A nameless person explains that he is and was extremely nervous. The narrator has a ‘disease’ which makes all his senses, especially his hearing, very sensitive. The narrator hates the eye of an old man and decides to kill the old man to be free of it. The narrator goes to the old man’s room every night at 12am, for seven days. Each night the narrator opens the man’s door and puts in a lantern. He puts his head through the doorway, extremely slowly, and then opens the lantern so a tiny beam of light shines on the old man’s eye. Each night the old man doesn't open his eye, so the narrator feels that he can't kill him. On the eighth night, the old man hears the narrator at the door and wakes up. With a scream, he jumps into the totally dark room, opening the lantern, and shining light on the old man's eye. The narrator drags the old man, who has only screamed once, off the bed, and then pulls the bed on top of the man. When the narrator hears the man's heart stop beating, he removes the bed and checks to make sure the old man is really dead, which he is. So the narrator hides his remains under the floor. Then three policemen come. A neighbor had heard a scream and called them. The narrator says he screamed while sleeping, and claims that the old man is out of town. The narrator starts hearing a ticking noise, which gets louder and louder until the narrator freaks out, confesses, and points the police to the old man's body, stating that the sound is coming from the old man's heart. Throughout the story Poe uses many techniques to keep the reader in suspense such as making time go slow and making time go fast, repetition, noises, descriptive language, imagination and much more.
Edgar Allan Poe starts of the short story by making the first sentence start with suspicion. There are...