Irony and Foreshadowing
This character confesses to the police.
Who is the narrator?
In this sentence, above all was the sense of hearing 'acute' which closely means...
What is keenly perceptive or sharp or extremely good?
The narrator cannot commit the murder for 7 nights because this specific feature of the old man is closed.
What is his eye (the vulture eye)?
Before the heartbeat sound begins, the narrator's tone while hosting the officers is marked with this feeling.
What is confidence, pride, or calmess?
The Tell-Tale Heart is told from this perspective.
What is 1st POV?
The narrator's insistence that he is sane, despite his wild behavior, demonstrates what type of literary device?
What is irony?
When the narrator describes himself as profound, this closely means that he has this quality...
What is a sense of understanding?
Poe builds suspense by describing this repetitive action the narrator takes each night for a whole hour.
What is opening the door and watching him closely as he sleeps or stalking?
Poe uses this punctuation mark repeatedly to break up sentences to show the narrator's frantic speech.
What are dashes? (- - - -)
The first person narrative style limits the readers' perspective to this type of mindset because of the narrator in this specific story.
What is unreliable or unstable?
In paragraph 1, the narrator mentions his disease sharpened this sense, foreshadowing how he later hears the beating heart.
What is his sense of hearing?
This word describes the narrator's heightened auditory awareness.
The primary source of the narrator's irrational fear and hatred in the story.
What is the old man's pale blue eye?
As the beating grew louder, the narrator's tone shifts from calmness to this state of mind.
What is panic, paranoia, or agitation?
The sound of the heart pounding under the floorboards primarily symbolizes this feeling.
What is guilt?
The author claims time and time again that he is not... to the reader.
What is mad?
This adjective described the old man's pale blue, film-covered eye.
What is vulture-like?
The narrator places his chair directly over this spot while chatting with the police officers.
What are the floorboards where the body is hidden?
Rapid, short sentences combined with exclamation points serves to highlight the narrator's rising degree of this.
What is madness or nervousness?
The old man's eye, described as cold and covered with film, symbolizes this state of the narrator.
What is distorted perception of reality or inner darkness?
The narrator claims he loved the old man, yet does this to him, showing how ironic this short story is.
What is murders him?
The term derision describes the mocking behavior the narrator believes the police officers are displaying at the end.
What is ridicule or making fun of?
The emotion felt by the narrator represented by the heart beat leading him to tear the floorboards up.
What is guilt?
The author's deliberate choice to use repetitive words like "Very, very slowly" creates a specific mood for readers.
What is tension or suspense?
The narrator claims the sound he hears is the old man's heart, but realistically, it represents the sound from himself.
His own racing heartbeat and anxiety.