Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Monday, June 5, 2017
SETTING OF PLACE IN "THE TELL-TALE HEART" BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
ABSTRACT
In this paper, the writer tries to
take a closer look at the short story entitled “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar
Allan Poe written in 1843. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the setting
where the story takes place with regard to its ability to create the horror
atmosphere in the story. The writer uses close reading method to analyze the
short story. The writer finds that Poe tries to violate the pureness of a ‘house’
where people supposed to feel secure without fear, and he writes no detail
explanation of the interior to makes the reader more insecure as if they walk
in the dark and cannot see anything but feels their hair stand on end. In conclusion,
the writing style of Poe when he describes the Old Man’s house taps the reader
fears even more, and what the darkness might hold.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1.
Background of the
Study
Prose is a form of language that exhibits a grammatical structure and a
natural flow of speech, rather than a rhythmic structure as in traditional
poetry. Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme, thee common
unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph.
Just like the other literary works, there are some intrinsic elements of
the prose. There are character, characteristic, plot, setting, tone, theme, and
point of view. In this paper, the writer tries to take a closer look at the setting
in the short story entitled “The Tell-Tale Heart”, in order to understand the
correlation between the setting and the horror atmosphere it creates. “The
Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story
known as one of the famous works of Edgar Allan Poe.
1.2.
Purpose of the
Study
The purposes of the study are:
1. To analyze the
setting in the short story.
2. To appreciate the
work of literature.
1.3.
Scope of the Study
The scope of this study is to analyze the setting of “The Tell-Tale
Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe.
CHAPTER II
THE AUTHOR AND SUMMARY OF THE SHORT STORY
2.1.
Biography of Edgar
Allan Poe
Born in 19th January 1809 at Boston, Edgar Allan Poe was
orphaned at a young age and fostered by the Allans, and grew up with them in
Virginia. He grew up and became an American writer, poet, editor and literary
critic who was also associated with the American Romantic Movement. He is
better known for his tales of mystery and macabre. He was amongst the earliest
American practitioners of short story and was generally considered as the
inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Poe is also credited for his
contribution in the emerging genre of science fiction. His works greatly
influenced American literature and also other specialized fields like,
cosmology and cryptography. His best known fiction works were generally Gothic
and dealt with themes like the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature
burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Poe’s works are also
considered as the part of romanticism genre. He became famous for his popular
poems like, ‘The Raven’ and ‘Annabel Lee’. His death in 1849 was a much debated
tragedy ─ alcohol, suicide, tuberculosis and many other things have been attributed
as causes.
2.2. Summary of the Short Story
An unnamed narrator confesses that he has murdered an old man,
apparently because of the old man’s ‘evil eye’ which drove the narrator to kill
him. He then describes how he crept into the old man’s bedroom while he slept
and stabbed him, dragging the corpse away and dismembering it, so as to conceal
his crime. He goes to some lengths to cover up all trace of the murder ─ he
even caught his victim’s blood in a tub, so that none was spilt anywhere ─ and
then he takes up three of the floorboards of the chamber, and conceals his
victim’s body underneath. However, no sooner has he concealed the body than
there’s polices knock at the door that have been called out by a neighbour who
heard a shriek during the night. The narrator lets the police officers in to
search the premises, and tells him a lie about the old man being away in the
country. He keeps his calm while showing them around, until they go and sit
down in the room below which the victim’s body is concealed. The narrator and
the police officers talks, but gradually the narrator begins to hear a ringing
in his ears, a noise that becomes louder and more insistent. He believes that
it is the beating of the dead man’s heart. Taunting him from beyond the grave. Eventually,
he can’t stand it anymore, and tells the police to tear up the floorboards, the
sound of the old man’s beating heart driving him to confess his crime.
CHAPTER III
DISCUSSION
A House
We don’t know where the narrator is
while he’s telling the story of the old man’s murder. The story he tells us takes
place inside a random old house about which few details are directly given. We are
told that the old man keeps his shutters tightly locked. A neighbor hears at
least one of the story two’s screams. The corps arrive promptly, just after the
narrator has hidden the body.as such, the house might be in urban area,
possibly a high-crime one.
As to the interior of the house, we
only hear about the old man’s bedroom, which is the place where the horror plays
in the dark while the old man sleeps, completely unaware. The room is all the scarier
because it isn’t described, because we can’t see it. This story taps our fears of the dark, and what the dark
might hold.
In speech class, you probably heard
that majority of people (in America) claim that public speaking is their number
one fear. What about the fear of someone in your own house spying you every
night while you sleep, wanting to kill you, and then being totally friendly to
you during the day?
The “ideal” bedroom is supposed to
be a fairly private place where we can rest and recuperate without fear. The narrator
completely violates the sanctity of the bedroom in this story. The night spying
is possibly more terrifying for our imaginations than the murder itself.
As with many Poe’s stories, the
landscape of narrator’s mind is also the setting of the story, and it echoes
the external or surface setting, the old man’s bedroom. Just as we are unable
to see the bedroom, the narrator is unable to see his own mind.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
If
you like stories that test and sharpen your analytical skills, while scaring
you with portrayals of the extremes of human behavior, this is the tale for
you. It is also only ten paragraphs long, so you can read it in one sitting,
which is what Edgar Allan Poe had in mind. He believed that if a story is not
read though in one sitting, much of the impact is lost.
This
story is an attempt to create an extremely brief piece packed with as much
information as possible, though perhaps not the kind of information we get in
many stories. No names, no locations. It
is as if the narrator meets you, by chance, in a dark café and tells you his darkest
secrets, knowing he will never see you again. The information we get is secret
information, the kind of things we don’t hear everyday.
“Home
is where the heart is.” Edgar Allan Poe makes mockery of this shopworn phrase
in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” expressing some deep anxieties toward the very idea
of ‘home’ as in the place one hangs one’s hat and ‘home’ as in the larger
community. Here home in both senses is a place of violence, death, disease,
anguish, and isolation. It is also a place where mysterious hearts tell tales
in the night, grim tales, of home gone bad.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bittner, William. 1962.
Poe: A Biography. Boston: Little,
Brown and Company.
Lodge, David.
1992. The Art of Fiction. London:
Martin, Secker & Warburg Ltd.
Literary Devices.
2017. http://www.literarydevices.com/prose/.
Web. (June 5, 2017)
Literary Terms.
2017. https://literaryterms.net/horror/.
Web. (June 5, 2017)
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