Literatura

The Tell-Tale Heart

The genre known as gothic literature, dealt with emotional extremes and dark themes, and because it found its most natural settings in the buildings of this style (Gothic Fiction). At the same time, this literature combines romance and horror and “the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere” . One of the most important writers of gothic literature is Edgar Allan Poe, who is also an innovative reinterpreter of Gothic, and he believed “that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul” . That is why most of his works had influenced in many other writers of the same genre. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of his masterpieces, and the following paper shows an analysis based on how madness, terror (psychological), mystery and guiltiness are one of the main characteristics of gothic literature.

One of the ways to show madness, is how the writer used repetitive questions about the characters ´sanity, for example “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” ,. “Ha! --would a madman have been so wise as this? . At the same time, how the character repeated words such as “I undid the lantern cautiously --oh, so cautiously –cautiously, I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, … how stealthily, stealthily --, It was open --wide, wide open, ! I felt that I must scream or die! --and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! Louder” . Because the most someone, in this case the character asked or repeated words the more his proven his insane.

Then, readers may see how Poe, wrote about a different way of the terror that the character is experiencing when he plans the murder, for example “And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror” , also how the character made a connection between his fears and the old man´s fears, “His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain.” Also the way how the character described the old man´s room, “His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,)” most of people know that darkness is the great example of terror or fear, especially if they are planning to do something bad, as the character who wanted to kill the old man.

Another gothic characteristic found in this short story is mystery, described in the way the

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