The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe 691-695) by Edgar Allan Poe has stood the test of time as one of the most popular short stories in American literature and is still read in almost every educational institution in the country today. In this written discourse we will uncover the reason this is so. Poe intends to capture his readers’ attention and then employee psychological tactics that will play on your emotions in only a very short amount of time. Not stopping there he then uses a tactic of letting you believe that this could be possible and this could happen to me or someone I know. While all of this is happening Poe decides to let you inside the mind of what it is like to be a deranged killer who has serious psychological issues. When fist diving …show more content…
What has the man done to deserve this? Has he done something wrong? To a normal person these questions could be answered with a simple no. However, the narrator is not normal. He has a psychological problem and the old man triggers this problem by simply having a small deformity that the narrator says “it haunted me day and night” (Poe 691). Our storyteller goes on to say, “I loved the old man. He never wronged me. He never gives me insult. For his gold I have no desire. I think it was his eye! – yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye with a film over it” (Poe 691).You may ask yourself, Is a pale blue eye is a reason to be imprisoned and be killed? You may know someone who has this same deformity, or you also might have had some small defect on yourself. Is this a reason someone should be exterminated? Of course not. However, throughout the centuries, this has actually happened on mass scales. From the Spartans casting their young off cliffs because of a defect to entire nations, killing off millions only because they are also a little different from themselves. This leaves you, the reader taking, empathy on the old man as you place yourself in his shoes and insert yourself into the story as also being a