Author’s Note:

In the writing piece I wanted to show emotion and really try my best on what it feels to be alone and isolated.

Tell Tale Heart Response

Do you ever get the feeling when you walk into a room and you know everyone is talking about you? I have. It's probably one of the most uncomfortable feeling ever. Not knowing what they’re thinking kills you, so all you do is sit in silence, wondering.

In this short story the main character grows more insane through the whole story. Through obsession and insanity he goes mad. Especially when cops come into his house looking for the victim that he killed. He begins to think that he can hear the beating heart of the old man under the floor, but in reality it’s all in his head, it's actually his heart beating louder and louder.

Though some people can be weird and a little creepy, are they really obsessed? Obsessed is when your whole world revolves around one thing and you can’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard you try. Obsessed is where you come to the point of where you’re hurting yourself. You don’t have to be obsessed with a person you could just be obsessed with another person’s part of their body. In the short story I read “Tell Tale Heart” the main character is obsessed not with the old man that he wakes up to see at midnight every night, but his eye. Every night he stares at him, not moving just standing there, slowly opening his lantern shining a small amount of light on just his eye, or in his case “the eye of a vulture” which is what the old man thinks of his eye. There is no logical reason of why the man watched him for countless hours of the night.

This short story was very hard for me to connect with because I’ve never been obsessed with anyone or anything before. The way I connected with it was in a totally different way. I thought about the old man instead of the main character. I thought of the fear he must have had when he abruptly woke up and knew someone was watching him. The author did a great job in that scene of the story of playing with fear. It’s a really creepy and scary feeling when you're in your bed alone, late at night, vulnerable. Not having anywhere to run or hide, and as the main character is watching him it made the old man feel vulnerable. This is what I feel sometimes, feeling as if people are watching, staring, thinking and talking about you. You feel just off balance, awkward, and many more emotions all wrapped in one all at the same time, and you don’t know what to do, or how to act. In the story the man just listened and was just sitting on his bed waiting for the main character to make a move which is exactly what I do except in different terms. There are many moments when you get that feeling that people are watching you and you don’t know what to do. Your heart stops, and your body is silent for seconds or minutes not knowing how to respond. Your ears are chiming in, seeing if you can interpret any of the words that come out of their mouths. Then, you give up just like how the victim in the story gave up on listening for the main character when he fell asleep.

The fear of being alone and isolated from the world is part of what the author is trying to tell us. That if you take away family and friends and anything happy in your life it can make you go insane. Where sometimes your thoughts can get twisted, and make you go crazy. Another thing that he might have been trying to convey is the fear of not knowing what others are thinking. It can drive you crazy and you come up with things in your head that they can be thinking. The idea is to keep love ones close to you so you don’t fall from reality and go into your own world, being alone. Being alone is the worst feeling in the world. It’s the feeling of loneliness and sadness.