Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"

I really liked it.

Joe(It only works if you believe murderers have scruples.)Nation

Let's hear what you thought about it first. You have read it, right?

or the smallest vestiges of a conscience. CAnt you hear the heart beating?

What sort of ideas or thoughts are you looking for? (read: What is your instructor asking you to write on?)

It's a very Poe'ish look into the nature of guilt and insanity.

Me? Not over the sound of my own heart banging away inside my chest.

Joe(hey, maybe THAT's what he heard)Nation

Compare it to Doestoyevsky's story of murder... Consider the whole range of the anti rationality that came out of that age in characters like Baudelaire, the French Poet who did much to bring Poe into the light, or the philosopher Nietzsche, or later, Freud.

Youre not a teacher in junior high are you?

Describe the Universe. Give two examples and use the Socratic Dialoges as your point of departure.

Just because I am pedantic is no reason to assume I have had the benefit of a formal education... I would suggest a Thomas Mann essay: "Dostoyevsky--- Within Limits".... Dostoyevsky too suffered his madness, his fits, and his obscessions... There, Mann considers both Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky and the relationship between mental disease and creativity... Might be an interesting and informative piece, and give the kid two points of a triangle with Poe as a third... Just a thought...

How would you consider these works... Are they not in the Gothic Romance style of Shelly's Frankenstein???

I have yet to read it, I just want something(s) it think and apply for when I do.

If we tell you we will spoil the surprise of the story.

Oh, you haven't read it.
Well, pay attention to what the blond in the red dress, not the one with the rabbit, says to the Second Assistant Secretary of War.
The story has been written up as an allegory about enigmas, but you might want to think of it as a deconstructive mirror image of a well known Swedish folk tale.

Joe(or you could spend an hour reading it.)Nation

I have to state my amazement at Joes ability to succinctly capture the true and deeper meaning of the story. Damn if you didnt nail it!