Read this excerpt from “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Then fill in the blanks in the paragraph that follows.
TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none.Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
In these opening lines, the reader is presented with a narrator who wants to kill “the old man” because of his eye. The author uses the lines to present a a character versus self or a character versus nature or a character versus society conflict. Based on this excerpt, this stage of the plot is most likely to occur in the exposition or the climax or the falling action or the resolution .
