The Tell Tale Heart Rhetorical Analysis

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story about the killing of an old man. Poe, who is the murderer, talks about what made him decide to kill the old man. In his mind, he despises not the old man, but his pale blue eye. Nonetheless, he discerns himself as being “nervous” rather than “mad”. By doing this, he also conveys the idea of obsession over the old man's discriminating eye. This idea blossoms as he continues to explain his argument of “madness vs nervousness” in conjunction with his textual structure like his repetition, punctuation and timing, pacing. Though the analyzation of his textual usage, it becomes relevant that they all point to the idea of obsession. Poe starts off by saying “nervous-very,very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad ?”. He asks the reader why he/she thinks that he is mad. This question repeats again when he says “how, then, am I mad?”. This early development of repetition introduces the idea of obsession within textual structure. He repeats this question to the reader as if he feels insecure about something, not madness because he makes it too obvious to the reader of that idea. He …show more content…
An example of this is in paragraph 2, were he says, “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!”. With his exclamation marks and commas, he develops the idea of over-excitement and with his actual word meaning. As so, this shows the idea of obsession. Another example is in paragraph 7, he tells, “I knew what the old man felt, and pitied, although I chucked at heart”. With his punctuation, he sets apart two ideas, one stating that he really likes the old man but the second one showing that he chucked at him. This demonstrates that he likes the old man and his presents, but really there is something within himself that stops him from truly liking the old man. This in return, leaves room for obsession to take