What are some examples of smell, taste, and touch imagery in "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
The horror in this story emerges from the vivid descriptive imagery that the narrator uses to describe how he stalks the old man at night. While he does not use smell or taste imagery, he does describe standing still in a creepy way night after night in the darkness, watching and listening to the old man. Then he says,
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...all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones
We can imagine the narrator standing still in the darkness for a long time and the old man lying awake, terrified from sensing...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
someone in the room. The narrator conveys a sense of touch as he describes how slowly and carefully he opens the lantern and shows the single streak of light coming from the lantern to touch the "vulture eye." We can feel the sensation of cold, too, as the narrator reacts to the eye with a "chill" that enters his bones.
Near the end of the story, the narrator uses touch imagery to describe how he tries to mask the sound he imagines he hears of the dead man's heart, beating louder and louder:
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 swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased.
We can feel the "heavy strides" hitting the floorboards and the sensation of the grating of the chair on the floor as he tries to muffle the sound of the heart. We can also feel the motions of the narrator's arm and shoulder muscles as he swings the chair.
Concrete descriptive imagery puts us into a scene and helps us feel as if we are there. This raises our own emotional level to a higher pitch than merely using abstract words would. Poe was a master at using specific descriptions to raise his reader's sense of terror.
In the opening paragraph, the narrator describes how powerful his senses have become.
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.
Although there is little or no mention to the senses of taste or smell, the sense of touch is evident. His touch is light and careful. He prepares carefully each night for a week in the hope of killing the old man, taking an hour to slowly open the door.
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...
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.
But he cannot kill the man until he can see the open eye. These actions, both the snail's pace of his movements and his unwillingness to commit the act until all is right, help to create a sense of terror and suspense. His later physical action is one of gruesome madness.
I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
How can I locate similes in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
A simile is a literary device that compares one thing to another using "like" or "as." An example would be "her eyes are blue like the ocean." This is much like a metaphor, but the difference between a metaphor and a simile is that a simile is not stated as if the two things being compared are actually the same thing. An example of a metaphor would be "her eyes were the blue ocean." Logically, a reader would know that the girl's eyes were not the ocean, but because it is a metaphor, it is stated as if the two are equivalent.
A simile can usually be found by looking for 'like,' 'as,' or another comparison word. The steps to find the similes in "The Tell-Tale Heart" would be as follows:
1. Read the story over once.
2. Scrutinize the descriptive portions for comparative sentences
3. Determine whether or not the comparison sentences are metaphors or similes based on whether it uses a comparison word.
One example of a simile in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is:
His room was as black as pitch.
A high school assignment asking you to find and critically analyze similes in a story is intended to help you learn to read stories closely, to appreciate how stylistic devices enhance the effects stories have, and to learn how to identify common figures of speech.
Simile and metaphor are both figures of thought, which work by means of comparing one thing to another or describing one (usually unfamiliar) thing in terms of another (usually more familiar) thing. In the case of the similie, the comparison is explicit, using terms such as "like" or "as" and in the case of metaphor, the comparison is implicit (e.g. Donne's "Ride ... till age snow white hairs on thee"). A special type of simile, the "epic simile" is characterized by being longer than most types of simile and metaphor.
As you read through the story, look at explicit comparison (every time you see "like" or "as" look closely). Think especially about the phrase "vulture eye" and the way the narrator percieves the eye.