Tell-Tale Heart Book Report

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Book Report “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe I. First Reactions a. Immediately after finishing your reading, write your reactions. Edgar Allan Poe is claimed to be the king of short stories. This is my first short story I’ve ever read by him, and it was quite interesting, confusing and disturbing. The narrator says he enjoys the old man and his company, yet wants to kill him because of his “vulture” eye. The narrator is unnamed and claims he is a bit mad but contradicts himself later by claiming he really isn’t that insane. Throughout the beginning of the short story, Edgar Allan Poe used many inserts by dashes for repetition, which gets his point across. “And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously – oh, so cautiously – cautiously (for the hinges creaked) – I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.” (Paragraph 4) When I first started reading, the story made no complete sense, but once I read through the end, I began understanding what the story was actually portraying. b. Try and relate the action or outcome of the story to your own life or reading experience. i. Did you see yourself? I saw myself as the old man who stays up and doesn’t move after he hears the presence of company. I would sit there all night petrified of the possible outcomes and the chance of death. Although I’m not scared of the dark, I’d be greatly frightened and restless. My mind would wonder through the possibilities, until I passed out into sleep. ii. Did you learn something? I did not learn anything from reading “The Tell-Tale Heart.” iii. Did you remember something from your past that you had forgotten? By reading this short story, I remembered when I used to be scared of the dark. iv. Were you inspired to write a great novel paint a picture, or make a new friend? What did you learn that you didn’t know
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