Cervales, Sofia Joy T.

English 45
AB English 3A
December 14, 2019

Reaction Paper about The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allan, is a first-person narrative. The title itself gives me the idea
that it’s a romantic story because most people have a mindset that if a story has a title with the word, heart or
love in it, it’s a love or romantic story. The title has given me imaginative pictures of a girl and a boy endlessly
falling in love with each other despite the consequences they have to face. The story’s title alone has given
people the wrong idea about what would happen and how the story will flow.

The main character in the story is insane. I say so because the first paragraph of the story states, ”I heard
all things in heaven and the earth. I heard things in hell. “I am humored by the statement because no normal
person has the ability to hear things in heaven, in earth, and in hell. I conclude that the main character is a male
through the way the character narrates how he feels towards the old man and the words he used in stating how
he slowly killed the old man and why did he kill him. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He never
wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I have no desire,” this line in the second paragraph
proves that the main character is the son of the old man because he said that he loved the old man and he has
never heard any insult from him and the fact that the old man trusts the main character for letting him live in his
house together with him. “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue –
with a film over it.

Love is the root of all good things while hate is the root of all evil. Contrasting they may be but they
exist in the story. The main character loves the old man but he hates his vulture eye. Why is that? The main
character loves the old man for who and what he is but there will always be one thing that he has about the old
man. I have learned in the story that if you love someone you must accept his bright side and his dark side,
because if you will not, hatred will grow and you will learn to think of things that will harm that certain person.

Never follow your heart, follow your brain, because the heart is deceitful above all things. What will
make me remember this story is how it has caught my eye and mind. It has taught me to never judge a story by
its title, like “Who is really the main character?” “What is the old man’s eye that makes the main character
tick?” and “What is the psychological disorder of the main character?” The significance of this story is how it
makes the reader’s imagination enter a new world of vision and understanding.