Author's Note: When I first read the short story, "Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe, it seemed to me like a complete nightmare vision of the world. As I began to respond to it, I struggled a lot with deciding on a topic that I really felt passionate about and I was running into the problem that there was just so many different ways to look at the story and respond. I even wrote a whole different response before this one. It wasn't until one day that we were doing a stream of consciousness exercise using a scene from a book that I decided to scrap my other attempts and start all over. I did the stream of consciousness using thoughts I had while reading "Tale Tell Heart", and through that exercise I got the main idea for my introduction and formulated my thesis. Now I feel really passionate about my topic, and it was so much easier write because of that.
There is this funny sense of abandonment that comes over the world as the sun sets for another day. The world fades from shades of bright and cheerfulness to an eerie, unpredictable darkness. When the doors close, and the only light left is the dim glow of the moon seeping through our windows, we lose our sense of reality. We see light as hope, and we are encouraged by the presence of others, but when the lights are turned off and we part our ways for the night, we are left in a dystopic version of the world. Kids are afraid of the dark because during the night nothing is predictable nor is anything concrete. Our eyes fail us and we are left to just imagine what might be near us in the darkness. We were not meant to ever be left alone and isolated; we were meant to be united with one another and rely on one another even in our darkest hours. When we are separated from the world, we begin to give into selfish desires, and we forget our true identities. Sharing with others and being around others gives us hope, but when the light fades, our hope disappears.
When the light is taken out of the world just what we would expect happens; the most ignoble deeds of our society are committed. In the dark, our actions can be easily covered up and go unnoticed, but when the sun rises, guilt sets in, and we can no longer justify with the darkness. There was a horrendously, indecent act committed by the main character in the short story “Tell Tale Heart”. At precisely midnight, a keen hour of absolute darkness, the old man was energized by the night. Because of his lack of hope, he turned to the darkness and murdered another man. When the light returned and the world was back in action, the man was overcome with guilt. Though before the darkness covered it, in the morning everything had light shed on it.
From the Christian viewpoint, not only is light hope, but it is the sun that gives it, the Son of God: Jesus Christ. "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." (John 3:19) As we see in the short story, the light knows the acts we commit at night. Though we do not reap the consequences right away, when the sun rises we will have to pay for our sins in broad daylight. As Christians believe, we were given day and night as a constant reminder of what will happen on the day Jesus returns to judge the world. For God sent his son to the world once before to give us a new hope in Christ Jesus, but when He returns again, for his second coming, he will not be here to save us, but to justify our sins, and there will be no darkness for us to hide in. "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. " (John 3:20-21)
In the eyes of Christians, this story demonstrates that there is a hope of light even in darkness. When we lose this light, we often also lose sight of reality. We can turn into people we never wanted to be at night because at we are isolated and lonely, and we forget our purpose. It is simply the act of being with other people, talking and sharing with others, that encourages us and keeps us on the right path. Having fellowship gives us hope that we are not alone in our journey on this world. As the Bible clearly says, we were given light, so that even though the sun sets, our hope in Jesus never leaves. Though there will come a day, according to the Bible, that the darkness will forever leave us, for now we must persevere through the night, and keep sight of the light that comes in the morning.
