Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” — Unit test
Question 27 • NY-Common Core ELA 12
Read the excerpt from "The Tell-Tale Heart.”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.Read the excerpt from "The Black Cat.”Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place—some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
Answer
A
fear for their lives.
B
admit to being irrational.
C
are unusually calm.
D
feel agitated and anxious.
Explanation
Both narrators describe themselves as emotionally unsettled. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the speaker says he is “very, very dreadfully nervous,” and in “The Black Cat,” the speaker calls himself “far less calm” and “more excitable” than a logical observer. These details show that they feel agitated and anxious.
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