The Power of First Person Writing Modern-day Americans are fascinated with horror movies and thrillers. From Friday the 13th to Nightmare on Elm St., people pour into theaters and pay to be scared! This was not the case in the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe’s career. People thought he was a crazy psychopath. They actually banned his books at one point because enough people complained that they were of no use and only brought bad thoughts to the human brain, which would lead to a rise in crime rates. Many people felt this way because of how he wrote his stories in first person and was able to convey emotions to the reader that normally wouldn’t have been felt by reading a book. In two of Poe’s stories, “A Tell Tale-Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, he is able to use the narrator’s point-of-view to try
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When the narrator does this, he is able to express his emotions and thoughts to the reader without literally saying, “I feel this person deserves to die.” He is able to have the reader express feelings they would have if they were having a conversation with somebody rather than listening to a story. The narrator from “A Tell Tale-Heart” shows this when he says,
“I bade them- search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, place my own seat upon there very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim,” (Poe 95).
When the narrator was able to tell this from his point-of-view, he was able to express that he was confident and proud of not only what he had done, but was able to get away with it, without referring to those words
When the narrator does this, he is able to express his emotions and thoughts to the reader without literally saying, “I feel this person deserves to die.” He is able to have the reader express feelings they would have if they were having a conversation with somebody rather than listening to a story. The narrator from “A Tell Tale-Heart” shows this when he says,
“I bade them- search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, place my own seat upon there very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim,” (Poe 95).
When the narrator was able to tell this from his point-of-view, he was able to express that he was confident and proud of not only what he had done, but was able to get away with it, without referring to those words