my review of The Tell-Tale Heart

[A letter to Mr. Poe]

[Saturday, Dey 2, 1396]

Edgar Allan Poe

My review of your story: the tell-tale heart

Dear Mr. Poe:

What is the line between the sanity and insanity? If one born sane, then suppresses his or her emotions and refuse to deal with them _consciously or subconsciously _until there is nothing left except a pile of putrid suppressed spirit, would that make one insane?

By reading your story about a nervous man trying desperately to portray himself as a sane person, not a mad one, and persuading his readers that he is not mad by narrating an event from his past. He starts to tell his story of how he designed his wonderful plan to murder the old man of whose vulture-like eye he hates very much. After he succeeds in his plan to murder the old man.then he starts to hear a sound like a heartbeat which agitates him to the point of confessing his own crimes to the police, stating that the sound is coming from the old man's body which was being hidden under the floor.

Now let me start with what I actually liked about your story.one of the things that I liked about your story Mr.Poe, was how the elements of suspense and precise description contributed the to the gothic genre. Using long descriptive sentences of the situation and being unpredictable at the same time, makes me feel the same nervousness and tension that the characters felt.like this one: “I thrust it in I moved it in slowly _very slowly so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep.”

Oh or like this one: “and then, well my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously_oh so cautiously_cautisouly (for the hinges creaked)…”

Another thing I liked about your story was the symbolism how you described the eye as an eye of a vulture. You know It got me really thinking.to me, the eye acts as a trigger.it triggers something deep down in the narrator’s soul.it sees something, brings something to the surface: “all a dull blue eye with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in the bones…”

“…, so cuingly that no human eye_not even his_could have detected anything…”

And clearly, the narrator distinguishes the old man from his eye. Mr.Poe, you mentioned it in your story:”for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye…”And now mr.poe you see? Here is the flaw in your character. He claims to be sane and clever and wise yet he can’t even separate the reality from his delusions.he keeps thinking that the eye is actually a distinct part of the old man.the narrator personifies the eye.

So vultures are scavengers creatures they fly above the sky always waiting and watching for a dead(decayed) body or a carcass.so was the vulture-like eye detected anything dead deep inside the narrator’s body ??? if I were a carcass of a dead thing I don’t think that I would want to be detected by a vulture so the best thing to do is to get rid of the eye.

After getting rid of the eye, there is the feeling of guilt because now he is begiing to realize(unconsciously) that he killed the old man as well as the eye. He starts to deny and suppress his feeling of guilt(but of course, the beating of his heart gives him away).what do you expect from a man who tends to suppress and deny and justify everything he does.

I think the ending was fascinating because it was so accurate to the tendencies of the Human Mind, not just the narrator.

keep suppressing, keep denying, keep making justifications.until the beating heart which is hidden under our old house explodes and give us away.our conscious heart gives us away.

So it really saddens me.the vulture-like eye which I see in the depth of the socket of the old man that I see every day is telling me by his vicious look:

Your hiding place isn’t watertight enough. Life oozes in from all sides.

I agree with you mr.poe “over-acuteness of the sense” makes any human go mad.

And what I didn’t like about your story:

Nahhh…im just joking. There is nothing I dislike except one thing: for any reader who is familiarized with your work, the pattern of your story is much like your other stories.

While I was reading your story: the tell-tale heart, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about your other story: the black cat.

that was all.

Sincerely,

Samane sayyadi