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TELL-TALE HEART
SYNONYMS
1.disturbed, annoyed, troubled: VEXED
2. careful, cautious, leery: WARY
3. boldness, daring, brazenness: AUDACITY
4. withheld, repressed, held back: REFRAINED
5. forcefully, passionately, furiously: VEHEMENTLY
6. smoothness, politeness, fine manners: SUAVITY
7. gestures, wild movements, spasms: GESTICULATIONS
8. scorn, ridicule, contempt: DERISION
9. sharp, sensitive, severe: ACUTE
10. intelligence, smarts, good sense: SAGACITY
Reading Comprehension
1. Why does the narrator decide to kill the old man? The narrator decides to kill the old man because the narrator hates the old man’s eye.
2. Why does the narrator think he is not mad? The narrator does not think he is mad because he is able to recount his whole story and because he was able to carefully plan the murder
3. Who arrives at the narrator’s door at night? Why have they come? Police officers arrive at the narrator’s door at night. They have come because a neighbor heard a scream and reported it to the police.
4. Why does the narrator finally confess to his crime? The narrator finally confesses to his crime because he can’t stand the sound of the old man’s heartbeat.
1. The storyteller hears a watch ticking. F (He hears a sound similar to a watch)
2. The noise makes him angry. T
3. He tries to keep stll but can’t because he Is so emotlonal. F (He is able to stay motionless)
4. The noise gradually becomes stronger. T
5. He becomes worrled that a nelghbour might be able to hear the noise.T
6. He attacks the old man in darkness.F (He opens the lantern the moment he attacks)
7, The old man makes no sound. F (He shrieks once)
8. He kills the old man In his bed. F (He pulls him to the floor and pulls the bed on top of him.)
9. Death is almost instant. T (According to the storyteller, the old man’s heart continues beating for some time; however, it is unlikely that the sound is the old man’s heart.)
10. He hldes the body under the floorboards of the old man’s bedroom. T
11. The police arrive In the early hours of the morning. T
12. He Is nervous that the policemen are in his house. F ( He is calm and confident at first)
13. He sits and talks to the policemen In the old man’s bedroom. T
14. He starts to hear the same sound as before. T (Although the sound is first described as a ‘ringing’, he goes on to describe it as being like the sound ‘a watch makes)
15. He starts to panic. T
16. The policemen find it easy to force him to confess to the murder F (The policemen do nothing; he confesses without being forced.)
1.Who is telling this story? Is it first, second or third person? The reader can tell that the story is being told from the narrator’s point of view by the use of the personal pronouns “I” and “my.”(FIRST PERSON) This short story is not told using third-person narration because Poe does not describe the protagonist as “he” or “she.”
2.What is your first impression of the narrator? What does he try convicing the reader of? My first impression of the narrator is that he is insane and crazy. The narrator tries to convince readers to think that he isn’t a madman.
3. How does the narrator feel about the old man in general? the narrator makes it clear from the beginning that hisfeelings towards the old man are warm and positive What, then, specifically, is it about the old man that troubles/bother the narrator?The narrator is specifically troubled by the old man’s eye which is covered in a filmy substance. Why?The narrator is obviously disturbed and terrified that someone will see into his deepest fears and violent plans. How often does the narrator mention this ‘thing’ in the story Poe’s narrator is obsessed with one of the old man’s eyes, which he describes early in the story as resembling “that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over,”
4.What does the narrator tell us he does every night? Why? The narrator is specifically troubled by the old man’s eye which is covered in a filmy substance. The narrator becomes convinced that the old man’s cloudy eye is the evil eye capable of causing him harm. Every night, in the darkness, the narrator watches the old man. The narrator is determined to get rid of the possible curse that the evil eye can put on him, so he decides to kill the old man. That is why he stalks the old man in his room every night, until he is ready to kill him.
5.How does the narrator feel immediately after he commits the murder? Do his feelings change? If so, how and why? Immediately after he commits the murder, the narrator feels very calm and confident. But while he is talking to the officers, he starts feeling guilty, so guilty that he imagines the sound of the heart beating. He thinks that the officers can also hear the sound and that they are setting a trap. He ends up confessing the murder.