Keystone National High School The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Paper Writing: Explaining the Literary Idea: Juxtaposition and Setting In a well-writt
Keystone National High School The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Paper Writing: Explaining the Literary Idea: Juxtaposition and Setting In a well-written paragraph with supporting evidence from the text, answer ONE of the following questions: Explain the juxtaposition in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”.Explain the importance of the setting in London’s “To Build a Fire.”DOCUMENT ANY SOURCES USED. THE TELL-TALE HEART
by Edgar Allan Poe
1843
TRUE! –nervous –very, 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. Above all
was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many
things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily –how calmly I can tell
you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day
and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never
wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. 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. Whenever it fell
upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to take the
life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me.
You should have seen how wisely I proceeded –with what caution –with what foresight –with
what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week
before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it -oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark
lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would
have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly –very, very slowly, so that I
might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the
opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so
wise as this, And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so
cautiously –cautiously (for the hinges creaked) –I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell
upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights –every night just at midnight –but I
found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man
who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the
chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring
how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed,
to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute
hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own
powers –of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was,
opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly
chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled.
Now you may think that I drew back –but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick
darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he
could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin
fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out –“Who’s there?”
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime
I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; –just as I have done, night
after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of
pain or of grief –oh, no! –it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when
overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world
slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that
distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I
chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he
had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to
fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself –“It is nothing but the wind in
the chimney –it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a
single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had
found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black
shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the
unperceived shadow that caused him to feel –although he neither saw nor heard –to feel the
presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a
little –a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it –you cannot imagine how stealthily,
stealthily –until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice
and fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open –wide, wide open –and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect
distinctness –all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones;
but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by
instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? -now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when
enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It
increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried
how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart
increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror
must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! –do you mark me well I
have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the
dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror.
Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I
thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me –the sound would be heard by a
neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped
into the room. He shrieked once –once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled
the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes,
the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard
through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined
the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there
many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
If still 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 night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I
dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the
scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye –not even his
–could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out –no stain of any kind –no
blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all –ha! ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock –still dark as midnight. As the bell
sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light
heart, –for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with
perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night;
suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and
they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled, –for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own
in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the
house. I bade them search –search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his
treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the
room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my
perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the
victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat,
and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting
pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat
and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct: –It continued and became more distinct: I
talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness –until, at
length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale; –but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the
sound increased –and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound –much such a sound as a
watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath –and yet the officers heard it not. I
talked more quickly –more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued
about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why
would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the
observations of the men –but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed –I
raved –I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards,
but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder –louder –louder! And still
the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! –no, no!
They heard! –they suspected! –they knew! –they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I
thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable
than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!
and now –again! –hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is
the beating of his hideous heart!”
To Build a Fire by Jack London
DAY HAD BROKEN cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned aside from
the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led
eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the
top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor
hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an
intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to
the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been
days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful
orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.
The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden
under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling
in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as
his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from
around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north,
where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trailthe
main trailthat led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that
led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally
to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.
But all thisthe mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the
tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it allmade no impression on the man.
It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this
was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and
alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below
zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and
uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of
temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat
and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s
place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be
guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees
below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more
to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.
As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled
him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He
knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air.
Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty belowhow much colder he did not know. But the
temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek,
where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek
country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out
logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after
dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be
ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was
also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the
only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of
those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice
of fried bacon.
He plunged in among the big spruce trees. The trail was faint. A foot of snow had fallen since the
last sled had passed over, and he was glad he was without a sled, travelling light. In fact, he
carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the
cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numb nose and cheek-bones with his
mittened hand. He was a warm-whiskered man, but the hair on his face did not protect the high
cheek-bones and the eager nose that thrust itself aggressively into the frosty air.
At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, gray-coated and without
any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed
by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than
was told to the man by the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero;
it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the
freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost
obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no
sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain. But the brute had
its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink
along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man
as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had
learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from
the air.
The frozen moisture of its breathing had settled on its fur in a fine powder of frost, and especially
were its jowls, muzzle, and eyelashes whitened by its crystalled breath. The man’s red beard and
mustache were likewise frosted, but more solidly, the deposit taking the form of ice and
increasing with every warm, moist breath he exhaled. Also, the man was chewing tobacco, and
the muzzle of ice held his lips so rigidly that he was unable to clear his chin when he expelled the
juice. The result was that a crystal beard of the color and solidity of amber was increasing its
length on his chin. If he fell down it would shatter itself, like glass, into brittle fragments. But he did
not mind the appendage. It was the penalty all tobacco-chewers paid in that country, and he had
been out before in two cold snaps. They had not been so cold as this, he knew, but by the spirit
thermometer at Sixty Mile he knew they had been registered at fifty below and at fifty-five.
He held on through the level stretch of woods for several miles, crossed a wide flat of
niggerheads, and dropped down a bank to the frozen bed of a small stream. This was Henderson
Creek, and he knew he was ten miles from the forks. He looked at his watch. It was ten o’clock.
He was making four miles an hour, and he calculated that he would arrive at the forks at half-past
twelve. He decided to celebrate that event by eating his lunch there.
The dog dropped in again at his heels, with a tail drooping discouragement, as the man swung
along the creek-bed. The furrow of the old sled-trail was plainly visible, but a dozen inches of
snow covered the marks of the last runners. In a month no man had come up or down that silent
creek. The man held steadily on. He was not much given to thinking, and just then particularly he
had nothing to think about save that he would eat lunch at the forks and that at six o’clock he
would be in camp with the boys. There was nobody to talk to; and, had there been, speech would
have been impossible because of the ice-muzzle on his mouth. So he continued monotonously to
chew tobacco and to increase the length of his amber beard.
Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold and that he had never
experienced such cold. As he walked along he rubbed his cheek-bones and nose with the back of
his mittened hand. He did this automatically, now and again changing hands. But rub as he
would, the instant he stopped his cheek-bones went numb, and the following instant the end of
his nose went numb. He was sure to frost his cheeks; he knew that, and experienced a pang of
regret that he had not devised a nose-strap of the sort Bud wore in cold snaps. Such a strap
passed across the cheeks,…
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