When we teach rhetoric, we do so by using great literature. Often, this involves a historical document. It makes sense to use Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, for example. MLK employed various rhetorical techniques to persuade fellow Christian clergy to support the civil rights movement.
While no one is surprised by the use of works like this, they often are when we turn to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” This classic short story is widely regarded as one of the best in American literature.
One challenge we’ve encountered when teaching high school and college students is their limited exposure to the classics and vocabulary. This is even true of gifted students. Introducing them to Poe achieves several objectives at once.
In the story, the narrator insists on his sanity despite committing a horrific act driven by irrational reasoning. The narrator claims he killed his neighbor because he believed the man had a devilish eye.
The story offers rich examples of pathos, symbolism, imagery, emotional manipulation, and the unique perspective of an unreliable narrator.
The sentence structures are rich, and they themselves draw the reader in. Correlated to that, the vocabulary choices Poe made are extraordinary in that he builds intensity regarding a murder without showing one drop of blood. Poe subtly suggests details while telling the story plainly, leaving your imagination to do the hard work.
By using what seems on the surface as unorthodox documents we teach through entertainment and deeper education than the mere topic of rhetoric.
