ROMANTICISM

During romanticism period, United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded
and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power,
emerged. Also, railroads expanded.

Industrial growth transformed American society and new machines for use in farming were
invented. Moreover, industrial expansion and population growth changing the face of the nation’s
cities.

The Romantic movement, was originated in Germany and spread to England, France during 1820.
Additionally, the Romanticism had the importance in the expressive art for the individual and
society, the art was of great importance during this period and romantic ideas centered around art
as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension of nature.

During the romantic period new compound words with positive meanings emerged like: "self-
realization", "self-expression", "self-reliance". Romanticism was positive and appropriate for the
majority of American poets and it influenced American writers. Also, the Romantic period increase
in female authors and readers.

GENERAL SETTING

This short story take place in a house where a crime was committed by a man that was obsessed
with the old man eyes which he called “vulture eyes”.

CHARACTERISTICS

The characteristics of the romanticism period that we can find in this story is the imagination and
mystery because it is a short story that relates about a crime committed by a man that was
obsessed with the eyes of an old man and the imagination this man had to plan during several
days the murder and the mystery is at the end when the police arrived to investigate about the
success.

RELATION TO HISTORY

The relation to the history is the book publishing that influence readers to know about this kind of
stories. The TELL TALE HEART is a relate of a man that write about the crime he planned and how
he carried it out step by step until he achieved his crime.

LITERARY ATTRIBUTES

This is a short story, about a man that killed an old man because his eyes were blue and it
perturbed him each time, he looked him and it is focus on an incident and it have only two
character that do not have names that are the man that committed the crime and the victim.
SUMMARY

The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story about an unnamed narrator that relates a murder he
committed, it relates how he planned the death of this old man during seven days and he
observed him while he was sleeping, he relates that he loved this man but one thing that led him
to commit the crime were the old man’s blue eyes which he called “vulture eyes”, the eight night
when he killed the man, he pulled a heavy bead over him. Then, he dismembered the body and
hid the body parts under the wooden floor of that room he assumed that neighbors listened him
because the man shouted only once. So, the police assisted to the house to investigate about the
success and he led them to enter and look for evidences that they could not find, he told them
that the old man was out the country. Then, he took them to the room to check and there he sat
down to speak with them and he placed his chair right where the body parts were under the floor,
but while he was speaking with the policemen, he imagined to hear the old man’s heartbeat under
the floor and he believe that the policemen had heard the heartbeat too. Finally, he confessed
that he committed the crime and showed them where he hid the corpse.

MAIN PROTAGONIST

The main protagonist is the unnamed men whom related about the crime.

He was persistent because he planned during seven days the crime “And this I did for seven long
nights”. kind, he treated kindly the old man before killing him. “I was never kinder to the old man
than during the whole week before I killed him”. malicious because he did not like the eyes color
of the old man because it was the principal thing that motivated him to killed the old man. “I think
it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it”.

CONFLICTS

The conflict in this story is Character vs self because the conflict the protagonist face is coming
from within and it encompass mental health struggles. “very dreadfully nervous I had been and
am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed --
not dulled them”.