Foreshadowing In The Tell Tale Heart

“TRUE! --nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad” (Poe 303). Those were the thoughts racing through the narrator's head before murdering an innocent old man. Poe creates fear and dread throughout the story, The Tell Tale Heart. This story is about a man who could not stand his roommate's, an old man, eye, so he decided he was going to kill him. The narrator creates fear and dread through his precision with the murder, the suspense that was built up, and the violence.
The characters, the narrator and old man, create fear and dread throughout the story. The narrator is crazy, precise, and the way he speaks hinted he is insane. The narrator is obviously crazy. He states, “If you think me mad, …show more content…
He makes it suspenseful by utilizing the skills of foreshadowing and tension building throughout the story. Poe foreshadows in many ways. One way of foreshadowing was the murder plot. The readers know the old man is going to be killed but it is not known how he is going to be killed. The reading states, “ I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” (Poe 303). Readers also want to continue reading to find out when the old man is going to be murdered. He stalks the man for seven nights before murdering him, but readers do not know which one is going to be the night of the old man’s inevitable death. The story also hints the narrator is going to go crazy. The narrator could not bear the sound of the man’s beating heart and in the end he could not stand his own heartbeat. He is paranoid and must of felt a little guilt because after his heartbeat became very loud he confesses what he did to the cops and tells them exactly where to find the body. Readers can feel the tension building throughout the entire story. The narrator is starting to slowly go mad. At one point he is scared the neighbors would be able to hear the heart beating, meaning he was paranoid. This all made the readers wonder whether or not he is going to crack. On the eighth night, the night of the old man’s death, readers may have thought the plan was going to fall through, because the narrator was almost …show more content…
One of the ways this story is violent is how the narrator kills the old man. The narrator kills the old man by pulling a bed over him. The old man stays alive for a while underneath the bed; his heartbeat is muffled. The heartbeat slowly came to a halt indicating the narrator’s deed is done and the man is no longer living. What the narrator did after the man is killed is even more disturbing. The narrator explains what he does to the body, “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs” (Poe 305). The way he hides the body creates a lot of fear and dread. The narrator thought he was not crazy because while cutting up the old man’s body, he does not get blood everywhere. All the blood went into the tub. The narrator is very meticulous with the body parts. He put all the pieces into a floorboard to never be found. The narrator has a violent outbreak at the end of the story. His guilty conscious got the best of him and he confessed to the police what he has done. The police are not suspecting of anything, but he does not hold himself together. The narrator states, “ The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them” (Poe 306). The narrator started to become very nervous about the situation. He could not help but feel guilty about what he has done. He felt he could hear his own heartbeat and that is making him go mad. This ringing noise, which he could not get out of