Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe Reading

Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

Reading Guide Questions 1. How does the first sentence create suspense? 2. Poe talks about TIME throughout the story: • Find three quotations to do with TIME going slowly in the story. • Find two quotations to do with TIME going fast within the story. 3. Repetition: Poe repeats words a great deal in the story i. e. "Very, very slowly". Write down 3 examples of repetition and explain why Poe repeats words and phrases.

Reading Guide Questions 4. Descriptive Language: Poe describes everything in great detail so that the reader can imagine the story like a film. He uses lots of imagery. • List some of the evil words that he uses: what effect do they have in the story and on the reader? • How does he make the "eye" sound disgusting? • How does he make the death sound disgusting? 5. The story is written in first person narrative by the main character. • List 3 quotations where the main character directly refers to the reader. Why does Poe do this? • Why does Poe have the murderer tell the story?

Reading Guide Questions 6. Find examples of the following literary devices in The Tell Tale Heart: a. Simile-a comparison using “like or as. ” b. personification-giving human characteristics or actions to something that is NOT human. c. alliteration – consonant sounds that repeat themselves in a line of prose or poetry. • d. Irony - is the contrast between what is expected or what appears to be and what actually is.

Literary Devices • Personificaton : Example – “Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. ” [Here, Death is a person. ] • Simile : Examples –”So I opened it–you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily–until at length a single dim ray like thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye. [The simile is the comparsion of the ray to the thread of the spider with the use of the word like. “It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. ” [The simile is the comparison of the heartbeat to a drumbeat. ] “His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness. . “[The simile is the comparison of the darkness to pitch. ] • Alliteration Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story. Meanwhile, the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. Example - “It is the beating of his hideous heart! ” • Irony “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. ”