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?

The Black Cat - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Black Cat - Edgar Allan Poe

From his prison cell, the unnamed narrator is writing the story of how everything in his life fell apart. Since he will die the next day, he wants to set the record straight, and tells us the story of his life…
From the day he is born, he is mild and kind. He loves animals and has lots of them. As he gets older up these qualities grow stronger. Taking care of his pets and hanging out with them is his favorite thing to do. His favorite animal companion is his dog.
Before long, he gets married. His wife loves animals too, and fills the house with a variety of them. One of these is a black, super-smart cat named Pluto. When the man starts drinking, his personality takes a turn for the worse. He starts physically and verbally abusing his wife and pets. One night, the narrator comes home from partying completely drunk. Thinking Pluto didn't want to hang out with him, he grabs the cat and cuts his eye out with a pen-knife.
One morning, not long after the eye-gouging, the narrator is overcome with a perverse impulse. He hangs Pluto from a tree in his garden, murdering him. Writing from his jail cell, the narrator claims he did it precisely because he knew it was wrong. That night, the night of the murder, the man's house catches fire and burns down. Only the man, his wife, and one servant are left alive. But, they lose all their money in the flames, along with the house. When the narrator returns the next day, there is a crowd in his bedroom, looking at his bedroom wall. On the wall is the slightly raised image of a "gigantic cat" with a rope around its neck.
Since he left the cat hanging all day and all night, he figures one of the neighbors cut it down and then threw it through his window to wake him up. Somehow it stuck in the plaster of the wall. This bothers the man for a long time.
One night when he's out drinking, another black cat appears on the scene. This cat looks just like Pluto, except for the little white spot on his chest. The man takes the cat home, and his wife is quite pleased.
When it is discovered that this cat is also missing an eye, the man begins to despise it, while the woman loves it all the more. After some time passes, the woman shows the man that the white spot on the cat's fur has grown. Oddly, the white spot now forms an image of "the GALLOWS!"
The man is too afraid of the cat to abuse it. The cat never leaves him alone for a moment, and even sits on his chest and breathes in his face when he is in bed. So, the man doesn't get any sleep. As his loathing of the cat increases, so does his physical and verbal abuse of his wife. One day he and his wife go down to the cellar of the crummy old house they live in now that they are poor. The cat follows them. In a fit of extreme irritation, the man tries to kill the cat with an axe. The woman stops him, and the man buries the axe in her brain, killing her.
The narrator wonders how best to conceal the body? After much deliberation, the man decides to hide the body in a space behind the cellar wall. That night, the man sleeps peacefully for the first time in ages. The cat is nowhere to be seen.
The cops come around, but the man has finesses them. No big deal. On the fourth day, still no cat. But, the police return and search the house again, especially the cellar. Right when they are about to leave, abandoning their search of the cellar, the narrator decides to start bragging about how well built the house is. He takes his cane and hits it against the spot in the wall where he's hidden his wife's body.
A noise answers his knock! It is a sad sound, like a kid crying. It sounds horrible and desperate, but also victorious. The police are on it. They take down the wall only to find the dead body, with the cat on top of its head. And that's why the narrator is in jail, sentenced to death by hanging. The narrator had accidentally shut the cat up in the wall with the body.

Themes:

Transformation

Disturbing physical and psychological transformations – often for the worst – are characteristic of most horror and Gothic tales. In "The Black Cat" some form of transformation occurs in nearly every paragraph. For the narrator, these changes are psychological. After he gets married, his personality spirals deeper and deeper toward the dark side, cruelly abusing his pets and his wife. His initially happy home life is turned upside down, and everyone involved is adversely affected and changed for the worse.

Violence

In "The Black Cat" the unnamed narrator offers us a parade of violent acts. Eye gouging, hanging, axing – these are the gruesome highlights. And by the end of the story the narrator has completely destroyed his family, and perhaps, completely destroyed himself in the process.

Drugs and Alcohol

In some stories drinking has both positive and negative effects on the drinkers. Not so in "The Black Cat." The unnamed narrator of this grim tale claims he began abusing his wife and pets when his drinking got out of control, wrecking his personality. The narrator uses alcohol as an excuse for his bad behavior.

Freedom and Confinement

"The Black Cat," a claustrophobic tale of marital life gone wrong, offers a distinct movement from freedom to confinement. We meet the narrator already in his prison cell, writing, to free himself from his bonds How he became so trapped is the subject of his writing and the reason why he has taken the pen to the page. We learn how he traps his wife and pets in a cycle of violence and abuse. While the man's story begins in a house of wealth and comfort it ends in brick tomb in the cellar of a rundown building. The narrator of "The Black Cat" feels trapped in his marriage and kills his wife to get out of her.

Character Analysis:

The Narrator

The narrator has major issues. This unnamed character is an abusive bully and a murderer. He made home a living hell for his wife, pets, and himself. And he doesn't seem to be confessing out of a sense of guilt. Over the course of the story, the narrator provides several reasons for his various behaviors. But mostly he seems to be blaming the cat (or cats) for all his problems.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Rope, the Tree, the Gallows, the Cat

The second cat wears a symbol of Pluto's murder on its body. It becomes a symbol of the man's guilt and depravity, a visual reminder of his crime, and of his changing personality. It also foreshadows the man's own death by hanging.

The axe, the cellar

The axe has the potential to be used for violence. Most uses of the axe are violent, like chopping wood, for example. Firefighters use axes to save people, but the axe is still used violently to break things down. Here the axe is a symbol of the man's breakdown, and of the violent breakdown of his family.

The Black Cat

1.What was the narrator’s opnion about the animals at the beginning of the story?
2.Why did the narrator’s life change? How did he become a violent?
3.Why was the narrator so angry with Pluto? Why did he first punish him and then killed him?
4.What was the sign on the narrator’s wall? Why do you think it’s there? What did the narrator think about it?
5.What are the resemblances between the second cat and Pluto?
6.How did he hide his wife’s dead body?
7.How did the policemen realize that there’s something behind the wall?

The Fall of the Usher House - Detailed Summary Character Analysis Themes Symbolism Imagery Allegory Questions

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe

Summary

The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. Although Poe wrote this short story before the invention of modern psychological science, Roderick's condition can be described according to its terminology. It includes a form of sensory overload known as hyperesthesia (hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria (an excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness), and acute anxiety. It is revealed that Roderick's twin sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cateleptic, deathlike trances. The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him. Roderick tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive. Roderick later informs the narrator that his sister has died and insists that she will be entombed for two weeks in a vault (family tomb) in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. They inter her, but over the next week both Roderick and the narrator find themselves becoming increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. A storm begins. Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, which is situated directly above the vault, and throws open his window to the storm.
The narrator attempts to calm Roderick by reading aloud a novel. As the narrator reads of the knight's forcible entry into the dwelling, cracking and ripping sounds are heard somewhere in the house. When the dragon is described as shrieking as it dies, a shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a reverberation, metallic and hollow, can be heard. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed and that Roderick Usher knew that she was alive. Roderick convinced him that she is dead and rushes to have her placed in the vault. When she wakes up, Madeline goes insane from being buried alive and breaks free with insanity-induced strength.  The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and both land on the floor as corpses. The narrator then flees the house, and, as he does so, notices a flash of light causing him to look back upon the House of Usher, in time to watch it break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn. The story shows us the decay of the Usher family with the house "dies" along with the two Usher siblings. Poe creates a sensation of claustrophobia in this story.

Character Analysis:

Roderick Usher

Roderick Usher is not well. While parts of his affliction seem to manifest themselves physically, in his overly-acute senses, his illness is primarily a mental one. While his sister is cataleptic and wasting away, Roderick is tormented by, to be quite honest, his own fear. By his own admission, he doesn’t so much fear any particular thing as he fears his own fear. And one day, he predicts, this affliction will kill him.
 “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a psychological tale posit that Roderick and Madeline are actually two halves of the same person: male/female, mental/physical, worldly/other-worldly, natural/supernatural. If this is true, we can see why Roderick cannot live while Madeline is dead, which explains why she comes back for him. Alternatively, if Roderick may have been intentionally speeding up his own death by burying Madeline early, making her burial something of a suicide attempt.
We can also think about the spooky connection that Roderick shares with his house. He tells the narrator that he thinks it is sentient or conscious, and that the house is largely responsible for his feeling so dark and gloomy. Many of his artistic compositions revolve around his house.  It might be that Roderick’s very identity has somehow meshed with his house, much the same way his identity might be shared with his sister Madeline. Madeline dies and so Roderick dies, too. Similarly, Roderick falls dead to the ground, and so does his house.

THEMES:

Madness

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is the story of a sick man whose fears manifest themselves through his supernatural, sentient family estate. The story explores both physical and mental illness, and the effect that such afflictions have on the people closest to those who are sick.

Family

“Usher” explores a family so bizarre, so self-isolating, so removed from normalcy that their very existence has become eerie and supernatural. The bond between the featured brother and sister characters is intense and inexplicable. Their bond transcends even death. One interpretation of the tale is that the siblings are actually one person split in two; thus one is unable to survive without the other.

Isolation

This story explores a family so isolated from the rest of the world that they’ve developed their own supernatural barriers to interacting with it. The House of Usher exists in its own reality, governed by its own rules and with no interest in others. Such extreme isolation forces the family members closer and closer to each other, again to a supernatural degree, and inexplicable to any outsider.

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory:

The Small Fissure, the house

The narrator observes a crack in the mansion upon his arrival to the Usher estate. Since he’s just mentioned that “The House of Usher” refers both to the family and the building, we should have an eye out for symbolic connections between the two. And indeed, we can see this small fissure as representative of a disruption in the unity of the family, more specifically, between Madeline and her brother. This is the disruption that ultimately tears the family – and the mansion – to pieces.

Doubling

We’ve seen that art mirrors reality in this story, but there are several other cases of “doubling” or “reflection” going on. Starting off the story is the inverted reflection of the House of Usher in the tarn that lies before the house. You’ve also got the inverted dichotomy between Madeline and Usher, twins, but male/female, mental/physical, alive/dead. Dichotomy means a division between two opposing things.

The Fall of the House of Usher

1.What’s the relationship between the narrator and Roderick Usher?
2.How did the narrator feel himself when he looked up the house of Usher?
3.What’s Roderick Usher’s illness? How do you describe him physically and mentally?
4.What’s Mr. Usher’s theory about the house?
5.Why did Mr. Usher decide to keep his sister’s dead body in one of the vaults under the house?
6.How did Lady Madeleine escape from her coffin?
7.What happened to the Ushers at the end of the story?
8.Explain the relation between the Ushers and the house? What happened to the house at the end?