Objectives:
1. To review time, repetition and oppositions.
2. To review setting.
3. To introduce allegory.
Materials
:
Creative writing book.
Students’ homework.
Poe’s
Tell-Tale
Heart
.
Procedure:
Have students take out their homework papers. Review briefly the terms introduced in Lesson
1. Tell them to break up into small groups. Have students take turns reading their homework to the group, 10 minutes. Recorder collects assignments.
Class
discussion
:
You have shared your ideas with your group. Many of them were different from each other. That is fine. Poe has created a memorable character in his narrator. We have seen that the narrator is stuck in time . . . “I had been and am.” He is torn between each and every opposition Poe gives him in the first paragraph. We have seen that he heightens our own suspense and anxiety through his repetitions.
You have read the whole story now. You have seen that Poe keeps moving us through this story in quite the same way he began. Can someone tell me what this story is about. You will be giving me the plot of the story. Now, can anyone tell me the setting of the story. Most students will say, the old man’s house. After accepting the answer, ask the class if there isn‘t another place that Poe describes in great length and even deals with time? Elicit Poe‘s narrator’s mind. Does Poe spend more time describing the old man’s house or the narrator’s state of mind? Then could there be two stories here? Two settings? Two conflicts? Two solutions?
A short story only ends once the oppositions have been resolved. Does the story end when the old man is killed? No, it ends when the narrator’s insanity finally does him in with the detectives. It ends only when the conflict between the opposites of sane and insane finally do battle.
When we read a short story that seems to tell two stories it is using allegory. Many stories tell a story with the hope of teaching a lesson beyond what the short story actually is telling us. In this case, Poe tells us a story of a murder, but he is teaching us a lesson about overworked imagination, obsession, and its downfall. This is what allegory is all about.
Closure:
We have just begun to explore Poe ‘s
Tell
-
Tale
Heart
. We will find much more to see in this famous short story. We have learned about allegory. Can someone tell us the two in one stories of
Tell
-
Tale
Heart?
Homework:
Write a description in your creative writing book of what you think an obsession of yours could be. (T.V., arcade games, gum, daydreaming, etc.). Then write a short story about the conflict that may arise. Remember your use of opposition, time, repetition, setting, mood. They all build to a good short story.
