The Tell-Tale Heart (Midterm)

Place the events in the story in the order they occur in the story.

1. The narrator spies on the old man in his sleep. 2. The narrator murders the old man in his sleep. 3. The narrator hears the pounding of the old man's heart beneath the floor. 4. The narrator confesses to the police what he has done.

Why did the man kill the old man?

Because of his pale blue eye

Why does the narrator begin to panic at the end of the story?

He thinks that the police can hear the old man's heartbeat.

Why is the narrator upset with the police at the end of the story?

He thinks that they are making fun of him.

Why did the author most likely choose to tell the story from the first-person point of view?

To highlight the narrator's need to convince us and himself that he is not crazy

To vex is to

annoy

To move stealthily is to move

cautiously

A crevice is a

crack

Hypocritical means

deceptive

What does acute mean?

keen

What does derision mean?

ridicule

You can evaluate the narrator's state of mind as unreliable when he

says how sane he is but then describes what he does to the body

The narrator waits a week before killing the old man because the narrator

says that he must see the old man's eye first

What does audacity mean?

shameless daring

What does the narrator say that madness has done to him?

sharpened his senses

What does stifled mean?

smothered

The sound of the old man's heart most likely symbolizes ____________.

the guilt of the narrator

What was the tell-tale heart?

the narrator's heart

To conceive of something is to

think of it

The narrator is overconfident after killing the old man when he

thinks that he has hidden the old man's murder

It is difficult to believe the narrator when he says that he

treated the old man well before killing him

The author creates suspense by describing the sound of the old man's heartbeat as the sound of a

watch's ticking

Vehemently means

with intense emotion