Many sentences, lines, dialogues, etc. help write a story like the short story. Yet the title is what completes it. This is also the case with The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, a mysterious writer, where – as you might guess – a heart is what succumbs someone to guilt to end p telling the tale of his wrong-doing. The title, in this short story, is extremely relevant to the story. It’s what gives readers an impression of what could happen. If the author had called it “The ticking time bomb” or ‘The greatest treasure of all is your sanity’, the title would be ill-fitting and become irrelevant to the story as well as the narration by the main character. It’s a title with pun and alliteration that makes the story all the more worth while and interesting.

So now I’m hoping everyone’s caught on to the fact that my subject is the title. Basically, the title says it all and there are many ways of seeing The Tell-Tale Heart. One possible way of seeing it could be that it’s a person’s heart that gets them to tell the tale of events that occurred. To put it simply: Tell as in put in words or make known; Tale as in a revelation; Heart as in the organ and also emotion, mind, soul.

Now you might have also noticed something particular about the title; it’s a literary device. Like pretty much every title, it’s a bit of foreshadowing, I could be seen also as a personification, etc. but it is in fact irony because there is a gap between an understanding of reality, an expectation of reality and what actually happens. The author uses it to catch the attention of potential readers as well as to get them thinking about what’s to come in the story.

The author’s way of portraying the title in the story can change a reader’s perspective. In this story, the title becomes crucial since it’s brought up a tremendous amount of times. It’s cunning yet simple to remember and short compared to how Poe could have formulated his words.

It’s not often that you’ll come across a