A person's heart is one of the most vital organs in his or her body. Without a heart, life would not be possible for any living creature. Due to it's significance, the heart is often incorporated by authors into their works of fiction as a powerful symbol. For example, in Edgar Allan poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe uses the heart of one of his charactersand its beating to symbolically represent an array of concepts, such as the narrator's fear, conscience subconsciously speaking out to him, and as a true sign of insanity.
First of all, the "low, dull, quick sound" that the narrator classifies as "the beating of the old man's heart" symbolizes the fear that is found within the narrator. This fear is noted when the narrator says, "And now a new anxiety seized me-the sound would be heard by a neighbor!" The fear caused by the beating of the heart actsan internal motivator for the narrator to finally follow through with his plan to kill the old man and to confess to the murder when......
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Approximate Word Count: 692
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |