Laarni J.

Santiago

BSED-3C

The Ruined City Analysis

(Summary)

'Wondrous is the stone of this wall, shattered by fate; the precincts of the city have crumbled and

the work of giants is rotting away.

There are tumbled roofs, towers in ruins, high towers rime-frosted, rime on the limy mortar,

storm-shielding tiling scarred, scored and collapsed, undermined by age. The rampart, hewn by

men, crumbles away.

'There were bright city buildings, many bathhouses, a wealth of lofty gables, much clamour of

the multitude, many a mead-hall filled with human revelry – until mighty Fate changed that. Far

and wide men fell dead: days of pestilence came and death destroyed the whole mass of those

renowned swordsmen. Their fortress became waste places; the city rotted away: those who

should repair it, the multitudes, were fallen to the ground. For that reason these courts are

collapsing and the wide red roof of vaulted beams is shedding its tiles. The site is fallen into ruin,

reduced to heaps, where once many a man blithe of mood and bright with gold, clothed in

splendours, proud and flown with wine, gleamed in his war-trappings, and gazed upon treasure,

on silver, on chased gems, on wealth, on property, on the precious stone and on this bright

citadel of the broad kingdom.'

The Ruined City poem is actually incomplete in its present form because the manuscript

or the copy was partially damaged by a fire and legend has it that a branding iron fell upon the
codex when it was facedown. The poem conveys the message the message that “everything man-

made will perish, and that they cannot withstand the passing years. In the ruined city, the author

described what he sees before him: a ruined empty city which is just a shell of its former glory. It

is clear that time has damaged the place but the true cause to its destruction was the plague that

killed nearly all of its inhabitants, including the strongest men. The narrator brings out vivid

images that used to be present from the mead halls, where gold-clad soldiers would toast to their

wealth. Unfortunately, their hardiness was no match for the power of nature. Even after the

plague nature’s forces continued to bear down upon the city with furious storms.

It was common for Anglo-Saxon writers to focus their work on the damages of nature

like disease and destruction of crops. Sometimes, they would invent a character that embodied

nature’s threat, like Grendel in Beowulf. The Ruined City also expresses this idea or belief,

similar to that in “DEOR” that all things pass in time. Deor is a lament by its namesake about his

exile from his life of luxury, respect and popularity. Deor expresses the idea that man cannot

escape his fate and thus can only meet it with courage and fortitude. Similar to that is the Ruined

City, like what I’ve said before “everything man-made will perish and they cannot withstand the

passing years. It expresses the idea that people will always die and buildings will decay because

time will keep on marching forward.

Laarni J. Santiago

BSED-3C

The Tell-Tale Heart Analysis

Summary

The unnamed narrator of the story is a "dreadfully nervous" character who disputes the allegation

that he might be crazy. He contends that his disposition arises from a heightening of the senses:

"Above all was the sense of hearing acute" (74). The narrator provides care for a wealthy elderly

man. For some inexplicable reason, the narrator becomes obsessed with the diseased eye of the

old man. The narrator likens it to a vulture’s eye and is so haunted by the Evil Eye that he

decides to murder the old man.

He meticulously plans the murder. After one week of preparation, the narrator charges into the

old man’s bedroom after midnight and kills him using the heavy bed the victim had been

sleeping in to either crush or suffocate him. Even after the murder, the victim’s heart continues

beating for many minutes. The narrator carefully dismembers the body in a tub. He conceals all

the pieces under the floor boards.

At four o’clock in the morning, three policemen arrive. A neighbour heard a scream and notified

the police. They are here to investigate. The narrator maintains his composure and even

entertains the police. After all, he has committed the perfect crime. Suddenly, he hears a

repetitive noise like the ticking of a watch. At first soft, the sound grows louder and louder. No

one else hears it. What is the cause of the noise--paranoia, his conscience, auditory

hallucinations, a supernatural clue, or (most likely) the sound of his own pounding heart? The
narrator can no longer tolerate the thumping and confesses to the murder: "I admit the deed!--tear

up the planks!--here, here!--it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Analysis

The Tell-Tale Heart is an example of a psychological story. The terror on display is both

internal (the mind of the narrator) and external (the grisly murder). This horror story is actually

about the demise of two men. It is not just a masterful portrait of madness but an example of how

guilt can make an already crazed man even crazier. The story starts from the narrator asserting

that he is nervous but he doesn’t admit that he is mad even though there are a lot of signs

displaying that he is. In this story Poe sees it in the perspective of the murderer or the narrator.

And the reason for the narrator to do this murder is because of what the “vulture eye” that keeps

bugging him which he sees in that old man. He did mention that the old didn’t do him any harm

but he still chooses to kill him due to his “vulture eye”. In a psychoanalytic point of view, the

story or better yet the narrator displays how a human heart behaves when he/she faces guilt

especially in murder cases, how he/she endure the burden of the guilt and the guilty must confess

somehow or be consumed by his/her conscience. Human nature is a delicate balance of light and

dark or good and evil. Most of the time this precarious balance is maintained (the balance

between good and evil); however, when there is a shift or a change, for whatever reason, the dark

or perverse side surfaces. How and why this "dark side" emerges differs from person to person.

What may push one individual "over the edge" will only cause a raised eyebrow in another. In

this case, it is the "vulture eye" of the old man that makes the narrator's blood run cold. It is this

irrational fear which evokes the dark side, and eventually leads to murder. The narrator plans to

kill the old man and hide the crime from the police but later on, he failed to do so because of the

heart beat that he kept hearing. What he thought was it was the heart beat of the old man that he
was hearing but it was actually his own heart beat. Because of his madness driving him even

madder it caused him to confess the crime that he had done. As to what I have said before it

displays how a human heart handles a situation he is facing. Like what happened with the

narrator, he was slowly consumed by the guilt he feels slowly growing and how his conscience

made him confess the gruesome crime he had done.