Blog POEst

For today’s blog post, I read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The short story is about an insane man’s confession of murdering an old man whom he cared for. Although it is about murder, the story is rather light in subject compared to other Poe stories. I think it would be an excellent story to incorporate in a junior or senior English class. I would use this short, engaging story to practice comprehension skills with reading. In I Read it, But I Don’t Get It, Cris Tovani discussed the difficulty of introducing a text with atypical words to the average high school student, and especially those that are conditioned “fake readers.” As most Poe, or anything written around the time period, there are quite a few unfamiliar words in the story. In an attempt to make this story actually understandable, rather than just readable, I would introduce a vocabulary sheet before reading. I would make sure that this came across as helpful, not condescending, as vocab sheets are not something secondary students would be thrilled about receiving before a reading assignment. I would go over the words before reading the story out loud. While reading, I would conduct a sort of directed listening activity. I would stop periodically and check in with students. They would be asked to answer short questions at the places that I pause, and the questions would prompt responses about the narrator and the symbolism on the old man’s eye. I would ask students to make predictions at certain stopping points and, at the end of the story, I would have students reflect on their predictions.

It might be an interesting exercise to have students write a sequel to the story. “The Tell-Tale Heart” has a relatively abrupt ending, and it would be interesting to see students’ different ideas about what happens to the narrator after the story ends. Similarly, it would be interesting to have students write a prequel, as the story starts off right away with the man’s confession and there is very little detail about the relationship between the two men.