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