The Tell-Tale Heart - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe

A nameless person explains that he is and was extremely nervous, but is not and was not insane. Rather, the narrator has a "disease" which makes all his senses, especially his hearing, very sensitive. To prove that he isn't insane, the narrator shares an event from his past.
The narrator has an idea that he can't shake. The narrator's story begins with an "idea," an idea that turns into an obsession. He loves the old man and has nothing against him. Except… His horrible eye, which is "pale blue […] with a film over it" . The narrator hates the eye and decides to kill the old man to be free of it.
To that end, the narrator goes to the old man's room every night at 12am, for seven days. Each night the narrator opens the man's door and puts in a lantern. After the lantern, the narrator puts his head through the doorway, extremely slowly, and then opens the lantern so a tiny beam of light shines on the old man's eye. Each night the old man doesn't open his eye, so the narrator feels that he can't kill him.
On the eighth night, the old man hears the narrator at the door and wakes up. The narrator hangs out there in the dark for a long time, then, with a scream, plunges into the totally dark room, opening the lantern, and shining light on the old man's eye. The narrator drags the old man, who has only screamed once, off the bed, and then pulls the bed on top of the man. When the narrator hears the man's heart stop beating, he removes the bed and checks to make sure the old man is really dead, which he is. So the narrator cuts him up and hides his remains under the floor.
Then three policemen come. A neighbor had heard a scream and called them. The narrator says he screamed while sleeping, and claims that the old man is out of town. After convincing the cops nothing bad is going down, the narrator brings them into the old man's bedroom, and they all sit down to chat. While they are all shooting the breeze, the narrator starts hearing a terrible ticking noise, which gets louder and louder until the narrator freaks out, confesses, and points the police to the old man's body, stating that the sound is coming from the old man's heart.

Character Analysis

The Narrator

Our narrator is such a wreck, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. He's nervous ("very dreadfully nervous"), paranoid, and physically and mentally ill. He doesn't know the difference between the "real" and the "unreal," and seems to be completely alone and friendless in the world. We suspect that he rarely sleeps. He's also a murderer.

The Old Man

The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator, partly because we only see him through the narrator's perspective. We know he has money). We also know he has a blue eye that the narrator is afraid of, and which fits the description of a corneal ulser. According to the narrator, the old man suspects nothing because the narrator was super nice to him the week before he killed him. We can't prove the old man wasn't suspicious, but because he leaves his bedroom door unlocked we can assume it. But, it seems he does trust the narrator enough to give him the run of the house while he sleeps.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The Old Man's Eye

The old man's eye is blue with a "film" or "veil" covering it. This could be a medical condition, like a corneal ulser, but symbolically it means that the characters have issues with their "inner vision" The narrator is fixated on the "vulture eye" aspect of the old man's eye. He brings it up three times. Vultures prey on the sick or dead. Whether or not the old man is a vulture-like person, we can't know. But that's what he symbolizes to the narrator. If vultures prey on the dead and almost dead, and the narrator is afraid of the "vulture eye," does this mean the narrator is dead or almost dead? Do you think that it's possible that the narrator is a slave and the old man his owner?
We assume that the old man is white. This is the one bit of color in the story, and the only detail we are given as to any character's physical appearance. If the narrator is a slave, this blue eye might have looked on him with an air of possession, dominance, superiority, and perhaps even disgust.
This interpretation would also explain the narrator's nervousness. As a slave, this sensitive guy could have been exposed to all kinds of horrors and would have lived in fear. It could also explain why the narrator took so much pleasure in violating the man's privacy.

The Tell-Tale Heart Questions

1.Why do you think the name of the story is ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ ?

2.What’s the relation between Poe’s two stories; The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat?

3.Was the narrator angry with the old man or his eye?

4.What does the eye symbolize?

5.What’s his plan to get rid of the man’s eye?

6.What’s the narrator’s illness? Whose illnesses are the same in the book?

7.How long did it take to put his head into the room? Why couldn’t he finish his work on the first day?

8.What did the narrator do after he killed the old man?

9.Why did the narrator confess his crime?

William Wilson - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

William Wilson - Edgar Allan Poe

“William Wilson” begins with a narrator introducing himself with a fake name: William Wilson. He doesn’t want to tell you his real name. He would like you to sit and listen to his story, the story of his fall into true and terrible evil, and if you wouldn’t mind, try to feel some sympathy for him, as he was the victim of fated circumstances beyond his control.
William’s story begins in his childhood; he always had an overactive imagination and a strong will and a propensity for vice. When he was in school, he dominated all of the other boys – except for one, another young lad who also had the name William Wilson, who was the same age and looked exactly the same as our narrator. The two boys competed in every way, and the second William Wilson often stopped the first from doing anything immoral. One night, truly horrified by the identical nature of this other boy to himself, our narrator flees the schoolhouse.
He ends up next at Eton, but before long finds himself tormented by a masked and cloaked figure whom he knows to be the second William Wilson. He goes on to Oxford and engages in vice to no end, only to find that the masked double is behind him once again. One night, after winning an exorbitant amount at cards, William’s double shows up and reveals that he has been cheating.
William travels all over the world but cannot escape the second William Wilson. One night, at a masquerade ball, he decides to finally put an end to this. He takes his double into a private room and stabs him fatally – only to find that, rather than facing a second William Wilson, he faces only his own reflection in a mirror. His reflection tells him that he only lived through his double, and that now he has murdered himself.

Themes:

Identity

“William Wilson” explores the theme of the doppelganger, or ghostly double. Poe’s inspiration for the story was the horror one feels when discovering another person shares your name. In this story, this horror is magnified by the exact identical appearance, age, and manner of the double.

Freedom and Confinement

“William Wilson” is the story of a man trapped by his own conscience and victim to his own overactive imagination. All of his attempts at escaping are necessarily doomed from the start; man cannot run from his alter ego, nor rid himself of conscience, nor break free of his own imagination.

Character Analysis:

The Narrator

‘William Wilson” explores the theme of the doppelganger, or ghostly double. The second William Wilson is the doppelganger of the first William Wilson; he looks just like him, talks just like him, has the same name, birthday, and tags along behind him all across the world. Poe has taken the internal struggle we all feel when we want to do something bad but know we ought to resist and played it out externally. The little angel on William’s shoulder has come to life –at least in his imagination, which in a first-person narrated story is as good as reality.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

The Doppelganger's Shielded Face

The doppelganger is a product of the narrator’s overactive imagination, then his face is hidden because William subconsciously wants it to be hidden. This makes sense; he was horrified the last time he looked at his double up close – why would he want to do it again? For one reason or another, William’s subconscious doesn’t want his conscious self to know that his doppelganger is really his alter ego.

William Wilson

1.Why did the writer use a nickname?
2.How was the narrator’s life when he was a child?
3.Who was the other William Wilson? What’s so strange about him?
4.In what aspects the two Wilsons are different and same? Why was the narrator frustrated with him?
5.Who visited the narrator at Eton college? What did he tell him?
6. Who visited the narrator at Oxford University? What did he tell the narrator’s friends?
7.Why do you think the second Wilson follow the first one? What’s not normal with his clothes?
8.Why did the narrator leave Oxford University?
9.What happened in Duke Di Broglio’s palace? Why did he fight against his double?
10.Who was the second William Wilson? Why do you think he spoke in whisper?

The Masque of the Red Death - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Masque of the Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe

A terrible disease called the Red Death has struck the country. It's incredibly fatal, horribly gruesome, and it's already killed off half the kingdom. But the ruler of these parts, Prince Prospero, doesn't seem to care about his poor, dying subjects. Instead, he decides to let the kingdom take care of itself while he and a thousand of his favorite knights and ladies shut themselves up in a fabulous castle to have one never-ending party. Wine, women, music, dancing, fools – Prospero's castle has it all. After the last guest enters, no one else can get in – the Prince has welded the doors shut. That means no one can get out, either…
About five or six months into his stay, Prospero decides to have a spectacular masquerade ball (a ball where the guests where masks and costumes). The setup is weird and wild, just like the Prince who designs it. The ball takes place in a suite of seven rooms, each one dressed up in a different color: blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. The black room, which looks like death, is awfully creepy – it's got dark black walls, blood red windows, and big black clock which chimes so eerily every hour that everybody at the party stops dancing and laughs nervously. Most of the frolicking masqueraders are too weirded out to go into the black room.
Anyway, the party's in full swing and everybody's having a wild time when the clock strikes midnight. Everyone stops dancing and falls momentarily silent, as usual. Then some of the dancers notice a guest no one had seen before, wearing a scandalous costume. Whoever the new guest is, he's decided to dress as a corpse, a corpse who died of… the Red Death. He's so frighteningly lifelike (deathlike?) he freaks everybody out, and he slowly starts "stalking" through the frightened crowd. When Prince Prospero sees the ghostly guest, he's furious that someone would have the nerve to wear such a costume, and orders him to be seized and unmasked. But no one has the guts to do it, including Prospero himself.
The Red Death masquerader passes within a few feet of the Prince and starts to walk through the rooms, heading toward the black room. Prospero loses it and runs after him in a rage, drawing his dagger as he approaches. But just as Prospero reaches the edge of the black room, the corpselike guest suddenly whirls around to face him, and Prospero falls to the ground, dead. The shocked crowd throws itself at the guest, only to discover in horror that there's nothing underneath the mask and costume. The Red Death itself has come to the party. One by one the guests die, spilling their blood all over Prospero's lavish rooms. The candles go out, leaving only "darkness, decay, and the Red Death."

Themes:

Mortality

Death is everywhere in this story, from the opening description of the "Red Death" plague to the closing line about death's "dominion." Images and symbols of death practically drip from its pages, reminding the characters, and the reader, of death's inevitability. The characters in the story all try to ignore and escape death, preferring to stay focused on living life to its fullest. But mortality can't be avoided, as they are reminded when Death literally crashes their party.

Foolishness and Folly

Prince Prospero, the main character in "The Masque of the Red Death," lives mainly for pleasure, as do his friends. Better not to think, and not to grieve, they believe – just enjoy life and keep on laughing. They refuse to give death the time of day, and so when a plague strikes the kingdom, they retreat to a pleasure palace to keep on partying.

Character Analysis:

Prince Prospero

Prince Prospero is a terrible ruler. All he seems to care about is pleasure, which is what it means to be a "hedonist." He doesn't want to spend his time doing anything but drinking, dancing, and laughing, and generally having fun. That makes him an awful ruler, because when the going gets tough, Prospero gets going. It makes him seem selfish too: he just doesn't care about the suffering of his people. He doesn't even want to think about it. Prospero does not want to face death. He deliberately flees it with his followers and tries not to think about it at all, so he can revel in the good times. But his attempt to escape death is doomed to failure: everybody has to die eventually. Prospero's impossible attempt to ignore death and focus only on life's pleasures makes him a classic "fool" figure. Sadly, he learns his lesson the hard way at the end.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Seven Colored Rooms

The colors of the seven rooms are just too juicy a detail not to mean something, aren't they? The black and blood red room seems so obviously to represent death, shouldn't the other rooms mean something too? A lot of commentators have thought that, and there is something of a general agreement among many of them about the meaning of the rooms.
Supposedly, the suite is an allegory of human life. Each room, in other words, corresponds to a different "stage" of human life, which its color suggests. The first clue that the suite is allegorical is that the rooms are arranged from east to west. East is usually the direction associated with "beginnings," and birth, because the sun rises in the east; west (the direction of the sunset) is associated with endings, and death.
According to this reading, the blue room, which is furthest to the east, represents birth. The color suggests the "unknown" from which a human being comes into the world. The next room is purple, a combination of blue (birth) and red (associated with life, intensity) suggests the beginnings of growth. Green, the next color, suggests the "spring" of life (youth), orange the summer and autumn of life. White, the next color, suggests age – think white hair, and bones. Violet (a combination of purple and blue, or purple and grey) is a shadowy color, and represents darkness and death. And black, obviously, is death.
Also, notice how there's no red room? Why's that? You might think of red as a better color than orange for summer/autumn, or as a better color than purple for growth. But our guess is that Poe wanted to save the color red in this story especially for its association with blood, fear, and death. That means it's always goes with black, just like the Red Death and the darkness go together at the end of the story, and red and black go together in the seventh room. If there were a red room, it would confuse the color system and obscure the meaning of "red."

The Clock

The big, black, creep clock is located in the black room, so it's not that hard to guess that it's meant to be a symbol of death. More precisely, it's a symbol of the passing of "the Time that flies"  and the inevitability of death. Its eerie chiming on the hour is a regular reminder to the revelers that their lives are drifting away with the time, and that death is approaching. Of course, the effect is enhanced even more by that way the clock has of stopping all the dancing and music – in short, all the life – of the party, and making everyone laugh nervously.

The Masque of the Red Death

1.Why is the name of the disease called ‘the red death’ ?
2.What’s the Prince’s attitude to the red death?
3.How was the life inside the castle?
4.Why was Prince Prospero’s castle different from the other castles? Why were the rooms special?
5.What do the rooms symbolize?
6.What does the clock symbolize?
7.Why did the people avoid of entering the black room?
8.Why was the red death’s costume special?
9.What’s inside the red death’s mask?
10. What happened to the Prince and his friends at the end of the story?