Tell Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe
Storyboard Text
- Exposition
- Once conceded, it hunted me day and night.
- Nights 1-7
- Rising Action 1
- But i found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it wasnt the old man that vexed me, but his Evil Eye.
- Z Z Z
- Night 8
- Rising Action 2
- Whos there?
- The story opens with the antagonist, who is the narrator, telling the listener that he can prove his sanity by how calmly he can tell us how he murdered the old man. The narrator is unreliable because he claims he has a disease that allows him to hear things in heaven, the earth, and in hell. But, then contradicts himself by saying he can 'healthily' tell us the story. He tells us him motivation for the murder what the man's 'Vulture eye'.
- Climax
- The narrator explains to the listener that he stalked the old man in his sleep, shining a lantern on his eye. He did this for seven nights and every morning he would greet the old man joyfully, asking how he slept. He did this to avoid raising the suspicion of the old man.
- Falling Action
- On the eighth night, the narrator claims to have been 'extra careful' when stalking the old man. He then goes on to explain his many mistakes, further proving his unreliability. While opening the door to the old man's room, he laughs, waking the old man. After a while of not hearing the old man fall asleep, he goes to open a crevice in the lantern, only to have his fingers slip and the old man to hear him.
- Resolution
- After a long stand off of neither the narrator or the old man moving, The narrator starts to hear a heart beat. He describes the sound as "A low, dull, quick sounds, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton." As the sound gets loader, The narrator fears the sound will be hear by a neighbor, so he leaps into the room with a yell, causing the old man to yell out as well. He smothers the old man with the mattress, killing him.
- With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room.
- In an attempt to defend his sanity, The narrator proceeds to describe to use how 'wisely' and 'cautiously' he hid the body of the old man. He explains in gruesome detail how his dismembered the body inside a tub so that there was no blood to clean up. The narrator then hides the parts of the body under the floorboards. Police soon arrive, just after he'd finished hiding the corpse, They say that a yell had been heard by a neighbor and they'd been called to make sure everything was ok.
- If you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions i took for the concealment of the body.
- The narrator lets the police inside, encouraging them to check the house and then stay to chat. He leads the men to sit in the old man's room, placing his chair just over the old man's corpse. He talked with the policemen until he started to hear a heartbeat. As his anxiety raised, so did the sound of the heartbeat. The sound soon became unbearable, leading the narrator to confess to the murder.
- It is the beating of his hideous heart!
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