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? Hearkenl and observe how healthily -- how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my braln; 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
eyel 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
conflict. Based on this excerpt, this stage of the plot is most likely to occur in