Glossary:
Hastened: be quick to do something.
Benevolent: well meaning and kindly.
Vagrants: a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging.
Disconsolate: very unhappy and unable to be comforted.
Abode: a place of residence; a house or home.
Indiscriminately: in a random manner; unsystematically.
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life—the last e ort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hang- ing in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.
It was a strong e ort of the spirit of good, but it was in- e ectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.
Foreshowing is like a fortune telling device, possible things that will happen.
Hints that are in Frankenstein that are saying that something bad will happen.
It is impossible to say how the idea first entered my head. There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it. When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever! So you think that I am mad? A madman cannot plan. But you should have seen me. During all of that week I was as friendly to the old man as I could be, and warm, and loving.
Tone: This part of the story say a lot that he hates something about the man but he still loves him, the character seems uncertain on what he is trying to say and what he feels. When he talks about the eye and how it is like a vulture he’s gets carried away and starts saying that he’s not mad but it makes the man seem even more mad and insane. The character has a weird obsession with the eye and he has no reason for it so it makes him sound crazy, scared even paranoid. He may have something going on in his mind that is unhealthy.
Mood: When reading this part of the story it develops a creepy mood and we feel a bit uneasy about the character. How the character says he was nice to the man all week makes us have a sick feeling because of what the man is going to do at the end of the week. The story puts us in a confused frame of mind and we feel weird out reading this.
The student’s goal now is to pick three of these things and analyze how they apply to the narrator in further depth.
4. Driven by strong emotions rather than logic or reason: this point was applied in the short story ‘The tell tale heart’ because the narrorator was obsessed with the other mans eye for no real reason, he hated the mans eye out of what he felt and the emotions he felt towards the man as he says “There was no reason for what I did.” at the beginning of the story. At the end of the story when the police were talking the the man his emotions got away on him and he told the police that he killed the man because he was scared of the loud heart beats. “Suddenly I could bear it no longer. I pointed at the boards and cried,Yes! Yes, I killed him!” if the man was thinking straight he wouldn’t have told the police that he killed the man but he had no idea what he was doing, he was just doing what his emotions were telling him.