Introduction to Short Stories Essential Question

Poe married his 13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Her early death may have inspired some of his writing. Poe’s best known fiction are Gothic (horror and romance ) in order to appeal to the public’s tastes at the time.

January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849
Biography

Vocabulary

• Resembled – looked like
• Distinctly – clearly
• Cunning – slyly, carefully, cautiously
• Hideous – very ugly or frightful

“I think it was his eye. Yes, it was his eye! One of his eyes was pale blue and dull. It resembled the eye of a vulture.”

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“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a fun little horror story where the narrator is driven insane because of his obsession with an old man’s creepy eye!
The narrator thinks he’s perfectly sane and tries to convince the reader throughout the story. He is suffering from extreme paranoia and mental health issues.
Ask yourself:

• What point of view is the story in?
• Whose heart does he really hear beating?

Suspense

• The quality that is created when the reader is uncertain about what will happen next.
• In “The Bet,” readers are left wondering if the man will stay the whole time or if the banker will win the bet.
• In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” readers are left wondering if the man will confess his crime.

Flashback

• When the author interrupts the action of the story to give us information that occurred before the story began.
• At the beginning of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Bet”, both authors tell us that the story they are about to tell has already occurred.

Insanity Plea: Use specific evidence from the story to support whether the protagonist is guilty or innocent by reason of insanity. Legal Definition of Insanity: In a criminal trial, the word “insanity” means something more specific than when we use it in everyday speech. You can’t say that someone on trial is “insane” just because he did something that most of us would consider “crazy” (like killing someone, chopping up the body, and hiding the pieces under the floorboards.) That’s because, in a trial, when we say someone is insane, we’re saying that the person didn’t fully understand what he or she was doing and therefore shouldn’t be held responsible for his or her actions. Read the following legal definition of insanity: “Insanity is a mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot manage his/her own affairs, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. In criminal cases, a plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity" will require a trial on the issue of the defendant's insanity (or sanity) at the time the crime was committed.” In this context, "not guilty" does not mean the person did not commit the criminal act for which he or she is charged. It means that when the person committed the crime, he or she could not tell right from wrong or could not control his or her behavior because of severe mental defect or illness. Such a person, the law holds, should not be held criminally responsible for his or her behavior. (INTERNET SOURCE: www.USLegal.com)