Furthermore, as a literary device, auditory imagery is relevant because Poe writes the story in the first person, which outrightly begins from the first sentence. Unlike visionary imagery, auditory imagery makes sense in this narration because the events unfold in darkness in the dead of night.Īs such, the auditory imagery exhibits the narrator’s sensitivity and provides the reader with a practical sensory experience relevant to the story’s setting. Notably, the imagery Poe applies is auditory imagery that makes the narrator sound paranoid, obsessive, and mad such that a reader almost sympathizes with his plagued disposition. Moreover, Poe uses imagery to prove how insane the narrator is starting to become. The narrator’s overly-sensitivity that progresses throughout the story becomes his obsession with his victim’s eyes and what Poe uses to develop the narrator’s character from his initial focus with the old man to the moment he murders him.Ĭonsequently, the narrator loses touch with reality, and his mental state deteriorates as the guilt for his actions haunts him through his insanity. I heard sounds from heaven, and I heard sounds from hell!” (Poe).
The narrator says, “I could hear sounds never heard before.
The narrator’s sensitivities make him sense and see things in hell, heaven, and on earth, and things that other people are not aware of. Nonetheless, the narrator’s denial of madness is proved wrong as the story unfolds to reveal that he is mad. The narrator admits to his dreadful nervousness, which he believes works to sharpen his senses but not to dull or destroy them. The narrator begins by saying, IT’S TRUE! YES, I HAVE BEEN ILL, very ill… But why do you say that I am mad?” (Poe). In the first paragraph, the readers can already detect the narrator’s mental instability as he acknowledges his mental condition, although he does not admit to being mad. Poe writes about the narrator who believes that he is not mad, although he is motivated to murder an innocent man because his eyes frighten him.
Initially, Poe does not characterize the narrator as he does not provide their relationship with the old man or give him a name. Through the character development of the unnamed main character, Poe shows how he gradually begins to lose touch with reality.
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