There are a number of various genres of writings that have made humans be thrilled, and express their feelings for long time. Among these numerous genres, a short story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' seems to be in the gothic fiction genre, in which many different genres are mixed together.
What is gothic fiction then? It is a mode of writing that is composed of mainly two elements: horror and romance. Horror, as most of us already well-know, is the genre that catches attention of readers by including inconvenient emotions, such as fear or desolation. Moreover, it usually deals with several extreme and unrealistic factors, including murders or monsters, in order to maximize tension in readers. The other element of gothic fiction, romantic, is a genre that we should look into much more carefully and precisely. Although many people misinterpret as the type of writing that talks about aspects related to love, but this is romance genre. Romantic, however, is the term that reveals excessive feeling of humans toward certain objects, either it can be attachment, love, or even abhorrence. A representative masterpiece of gothic fiction genre is Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein,' in which all the aspects mentioned above is contained.
'The Tell-Tale Heart' also consists of factors of gothic fiction. To begin with, horror is apparently well-shown in this novel. The murder scene is meticulously portrayed, by which readers can easily recognize how the man approached the old man, how he killed, and how he buried the dead body. Furthermore, a very dark atmosphere proposed by the narrator with the man's emergent actions and mental instability truly assist readers to feel tension and fear. Personally, especially the scene which the man suddenly starts to hear strange irritating sound while he is trying to prevent police officers from figuring out his crime obviously made me concentrated deeply, and be fearful.
In addition, factors of romantic genre can also be readily found in 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. There are a lot of scenes that illustrate how much the man is wanting to kill the old man, and the effort that he puts in his vicious action. Additionally, at the front and the end part of this story, the man keeps insisting that he is not a mad person in order to conceal his guilt, even though it is too obvious that he committed the crime. Like this, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' shows characteristics of romantic genre: passionate wants and extraordinary persistence of the main character.
Not only horror and romantic, but there were lots of parts in the story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' that also revealed many different genres. For instance, the relationship between the man and the old man was not uncovered even until the end of the story, which seemed to be quite mysterious to me. Regarding these minor distinctive genres, horror, and romantic factors combined together as I mentioned above, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' is definitely gothic fiction.
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