Sound Imagery In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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Renowned poet and story writer Edgar Allan Poe’s life is impacted by the deaths of many of the people that he cared most about, and this leads him to channel his sorrow into both his short stories and poems to create a strong emotional effect for his readers. The most common feelings Poe creates for his readers are sadness for the death of a loved one and the horror of death. Poe’s style is characterized by his use of sound imagery, repeated elements, and irony, to create these feelings. Poe uses sound imagery to create the effect of horror in several of his stories and poems. Any abnormal sound, either in daylight or darkness, can promote fear. As Poe uses the simile “a low dull quick sound much like a watch makes when enveloped by cotton,” in his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” to describe the a heartbeat, it evokes a sense of dread in the reader . This example of sound imagery is used twice in the story; once right before the deranged narrator kills the old man, and again when the narrator is sitting with the police. The narrator is responsible for stopping the old man’s heart and so the horror of hearing the heartbeat a second time after the old man is dead drives the narrator to confess his crime.…show more content…
In Poe’s poem “The Raven,” he uses situational irony such as a talking raven that will leave the narrator nevermore, the narrator will see Lenore nevermore, and he will nevermore forget her. Poe makes his readers feel heartfelt sorrow for the narrator because his beloved is with the angels, and now the devil has sent this demonic bird to torture him and let him know that he will never see Lenore again in his life or his

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