Latest / Luke's English Podcast / 906. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe 🖤😱 (Learn English with a Short Story)(M4A_128K)

Transcript

906. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe 🖤😱 (Learn English with a Short Story)(M4A_128K) · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, listeners, Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. I hope
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: you're doing well today. So brand new episode, and there's
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: a PDF for this one, by the way, which includes
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the script of the story that I'm going to read
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to you, plus some of my notes and other bits
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and pieces. You can download the pdf completely free. Just
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: check the link that you'll find in the description of
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: this episode in your podcast app of choice or on YouTube.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: If you are watching the video version, you'll see a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: link in the description you can just directly download the
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: PDF from there. Okay, all right, then I'm actually going
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: to start reading from the PDF right now, so let's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: do that. Here we go. Hello, and welcome back to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Luke's English Podcast. This is episode nine hundred and six,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and it's one of those episodes where I tell you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a short story and use it to help you learn English.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It's nearly Halloween, it's just the end of October, so
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: this time I've decided to tell you a creepy old story.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: This is The Telltale Heart by Edgar All and Poe,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a classic short story of Gothic horror fiction, first published
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty three. And so The tell Tale Heart
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: by Edgar Allan Poe. Do you know this author? Have
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you ever read any of his work? Are you familiar
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: with this particular story? Edgar Allan Poe is known for
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: his dark Gothic writing style and for being one of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the pioneers of modern horror, mystery and detective fiction. It's
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: just my cup of tea and perfect for Halloween. So first,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I'll tell the story from start to finish, see if
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: you can follow it all. The story should be about
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes long. I think after I've told you the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: whole story, I'll summarize what happens in the story to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: make sure you've got it all, and I'll give some
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: comments about what it all means. Then I'll go through
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: the story again, line by line, and we'll explain a
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: lot of the vocabulary, helping you to understand it all
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: much more clearly. Show which bits of English are old fashioned, because,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: as I said, this story was written in the middle
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. So I will highlight the things
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that are old fashioned and just generally explain bits of vocabulary.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: So learn English with a short story. The short story
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: will be I don't know, fifteen to twenty minutes, and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: then the rest of the episode will be the learn
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: English part, so it might be a short story but
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: long episode. We'll see. Anyway, let's get started now. If
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you don't like psychological horror stories or scary stories in general,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you might not like this. It might not be for you. Also,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you might want to know in advance that there are
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: one or two slightly graphic and violent moments in this story.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So if you are squeamish, meaning if you don't like
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: kind of disgusting things, if you're very sensitive to those
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: sorts of things, if you're squeamish, or maybe if you're
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: listening to this with children, please be cautious. Okay, just
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: before I start reading, here is one thing to consider
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: as you listen. So one question, what do you think
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: of the mental state of the person telling the story?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean me, I mean what do you
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: think of the mental state of the narrator of this story,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the person who wrote the story? You know what I mean? Right?
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So what do you think of the mental state of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the person telling the story? Is he or she mad
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: or quite sane? How would you describe the mental state
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: of the person narrating this story? Okay, so let's get started.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: This is the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And this is where I have to do some acting.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to have to try and act my
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: way through this. Okay, ready sitting comfortably, Yes, let's begin
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: The Tail Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. True nervous,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: very dreadfully nervous. I had been and am. But why
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: will you say that I am mad? The disease had
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken and observe?
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: How healthily, how calmly? I can tell you the whole story.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: It is impossible to say how first the idea entered
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: my brain, But once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Object There was none, passion, there was none. I loved
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: the old man. He had never wronged me, he'd never
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: given me insult for his gold. I had no desire.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I think it was his eye, Yes, it was this.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture, a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by degrees,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: very gradually I made up my mind to take the
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: life of the old man, and thus rid myself of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the eye forever. Now this is the point you fancy
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: me mad. Mad men know nothing, But you should have
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: With what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: went to work. I was never kinder to the old
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: man than during the whole week before I killed him.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And every night, about midnight I turned the latch of
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: his door and opened it oh so gently. And then
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: when I'd made an opening sufficient for my head, I
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: put in a dark lantern, all closed closed so that
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: no light shone out. And then I thrust in my head. Oh,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it in. I moved it slowly, very very slowly, so
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: took me an hour to place my whole head within
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the opening, so far that I could see him as
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: he lay upon his bed. Ha would a madman have
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: been so wise as this? And then when my head
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: oh so cautiously cautiously, for the hinges creaked. I undid
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it just so much that a single thin ray fell
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: long nights, every night, just at midnight. But I found
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: do the work. For it was not the old man
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: who vexed me, but his evil eye. And every morning,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a hearty tone, and inquiring how he'd passed the night.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So you see, he would have been a very profound
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: old man, indeed to suspect that every night, just at
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: twelve I looked in upon him while he slept. Upon
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: than did mine. Never before that night had I felt
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity. I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph to think that
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: there I was opening the door, little by little, and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Now you may think that I drew back, but no.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: His room was as black as pitch, with the thick darkness,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: for the shutters were close, fastened through fear of robbers,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and so I knew that he could not see the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: I had my head in and was about to open
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and the old man sprang up in his bed, crying out,
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  Speaker 1: Who's there. I kept quite still and said nothing. For
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: a whole hour, I did not move a muscle, and
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in the meantime I did not hear him lie down.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: He was still sitting up in the bed, listening, just
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: as I have done night after night, hearkening to the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: death watches in the wall. Presently I heard a slight groan,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: It was not a groan of pain or of grief.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Oh no, it was the low, stifled sound that arises
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I knew the sound well many a night, just at midnight,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: when all the world slept, it has welled up from
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo the terrors
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that distracted me. I say, I knew it well. I
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I chuckled at heart. I knew that he'd been lying
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: awake ever since the first slight noise when he'd turned
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: in his bed. His fears had been ever since growing
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: upon him. He'd been trying to fancy them causeless, but
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: could not. He'd been saying to himself, Oh, it is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: nothing but the wind in the chimney. It's only a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: mouse crossing the floor. Or it is merely a cricket
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: which has made a single chirp. Yes, he's been trying
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: to comfort himself with all these suppositions. But he'd found
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: all in vain, all in vain, because death, in approaching him,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: unperceived shadow that caused him to feel although he neither
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: sword nor heard, to feel the presence of my head
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: within the room, when I had waited a long time,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: open a little, a very very little crevice in the lantern.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: So I opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: until at length a single dim ray, like the thread
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: of the spider, shot out from the crevice and fell
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: upon the vulture eye. It was open, wide, wide open,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: saw it with perfect distinctness, all a dull blue, with
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a hideous veil over it. The chilled the very marrow
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: in my bones. But I could see nothing else of
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: the old man's face or person, for I had directed
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the ray, as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And now have I not told you that what you
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Now I say, there came to my ears a low, dull,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I knew that sound well too. It was the beating
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: of the old man's heart. It increased my fury as
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime, the hellish
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: must have been extreme. It he grew louder, I say,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: louder every moment. Do you mark me well? I have
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: told you that I am nervous, and so I am.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And now at the dead hour of the night, amid
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet for
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: beating grew louder louder. I thought the heart must burst.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: And now a new anxiety seized me. The sound would
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: be heard by a neighbor. The old man's hour had come.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: leapt into the room. He shrieked once once, only in
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: an instant. I dragged him to the floor and pulled
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: find the deed so far done. But for many minutes
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: did not vex me. It would not be heard through
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: If you still think me mad, you will think so
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: no longer. When I described the wise precautions I took
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all, I
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head, and the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: arms and the legs. I then took up three planks
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: the scantlings. I then replaced the board so cleverly, so cunningly,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that no human eye, not even his, could have detected
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out, no stain
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: of any kind, no blood spot whatever. I had been
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: too wary for that. A tub had caught all. When
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I had made an end of these labors, it was
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: four o'clock, still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the hour, there came a knocking at the street door.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I went down to open it with a light heart,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: for what had I now to fear? There entered three men,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: who introduced themselves with perfect suavity as officers of the police.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: suspicion of foul play had been aroused, information had been
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: lodged at the police office, and they the officers, had
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: been deputed to search the premises. I smiled, for what
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: had I to fear? I bade the gentleman welcome. The shriek,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I said, was my own in a dream. The old
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: man I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: my visitors all over the house. I bade them search,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: search well. I led them at length to his chamber.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I showed them his treasures, secure undisturbed. In the enthusiasm
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: corpse of the victim. The officers were satisfied my manner
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: But ere long I felt myself getting pale and wished
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in my ears, But still they sat and still chatted.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: The ringing became more distinct. It continued and became more distinct.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: but it continued and gained definitiveness, until at length I
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: found that the noise was not within my ears, no doubt.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I now grew very pale. But I talked more fluently
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased, and
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: in cotton. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: in a high key and with violent gesticulations, but the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: if excited to fury by the observations of the men.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: But the noise steadily increased. Oh God, what could I do?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I foamed, I raved, I swore. I swung the chair
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: upon which I'd been sitting and grated it upon the boards.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: But the noise arose over all and continually increased. It
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: grew louder, louder louder. And still the men chatted pleasantly
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and smiled. Was it possible they heard, not, Almighty God, No, no,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: they heard. They suspected, they knew. They were making a
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: mockery of my horror. This I thought, and this I think.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: But anything was better than this agony, anything was more
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: tolerable than this derision. I could bear those hypocritical smiles.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: No longer I felt that I must scream or die.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: And now again hark louder, louder, louder, villains. I shrieked, dissemble,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: no more, I admit the deed tear up the planks.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Here here it is the beating of his hideous heart.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: HM acting on lux English podcasts. Right, So that's the
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: end of the story. How did you get on with that? Everybody?
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Did you manage to follow it? I understand it's quite
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: old fashioned in its style. It might not be completely
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: clear what was going on, but I will explain everything, right,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to explain every single detail, so you'll definitely
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: understand this. Now, this is considered to be a classic
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: short story. It's a very well known short story that's
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: been studied, that's been studied over the years. And Edgar
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Allan Poe is like a very very well known and
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: considered to be a very influential writer. So what's this
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: all about? Here are some comments on and about themes
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: in the story. Well, actually, before I do that, I
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: need to give a quick summary of the story. Okay,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: so here's my summary of this story, the tell Tale Heart.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: So basically, it's described by this person, and in literature
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: there's this concept of the unreliable narrator. Okay, the unreliable narrator.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: This is a story that's narrated by someone from their
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: point of view and they describe the things that happen.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: But as the reader, you kind of have to read
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: between the lines, and you don't entirely trust the account
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: that's being given by this narrator. So the story is
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: revealed to you in what the narrator is not saying,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: or the fact that you know that the narrator is
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: perhaps lying about some of the things, or is not
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: a truly reliable storyteller. And that's definitely the case here
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: that the person telling the story is trying to convince
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: us that he's not mad. But clearly this person is
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: quite disturbed. And it's not quite clear why this person
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: is disturbed, what it is that's making them so paranoid,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: so anxious, so nervous, and so homicidal. But it appears
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to be just complete sort of a form of madness. Right,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So the storyteller describes how, first of all, I'm assuming
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: this is a man. I don't know why. I mean,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: it could be a woman, could easily be a woman.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: this is a man telling the story. So I'll be
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: using I'll just be saying he him, you know, during
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the story. Right, So he starts by trying to convince
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: us that he's not mad. Right, He's saying, I'm absolutely
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: not mad. I just was sure I was feeling very nervous,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: but I wasn't mad, And he explains that madness seems
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: to be His definition of madness is where your senses
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: are not very clear, or that your thoughts are not clear,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: like you don't know what you're doing, or you don't
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: have any clarity in your thoughts. He argues that he's
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: completely sane, meaning not mad, not insane. He's sane because
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: his thoughts were so clear, and his senses were so acute,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: especially his sense of hearing, and he describes hearing all
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: these different things, and at times during the story he
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: talks about hearing this heartbeat, which drives him quite mad.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So anyway, he talks about this old man that he
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: decides to kill. Decides to murder this old man not
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: because he hates the old man, not because the old
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: man has said or done anything against him. And it's
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: not because he wants to steal the old man's money,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and apparently the old man does have money. It's not
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: for those reasons. It's because of the old man's eye.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: He's very disturbed by one of the one of the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: eyes of the old man who and he says, this
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: eye looks like the eye of a vulture. So a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: vulture is a large bird, a sort of scary, frightening
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: looking bird. They fly very high in the sky. They're
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: very large. They fly really high in the sky and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: they look for dead animals, and when there's an animal
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that's on the ground that's dyed, the vultures come down
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: and they've got these hooked beaks and these long, ugly necks,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: and they eat the flesh of the dead animals that
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: are lying on the ground. So they're really ugly, disgusting birds,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: really quite horrible. And he says that this old man's
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: eye looks like the eye of a vulture. He describes
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the eye as being sort of pale blue with a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: film over it, so there's a cloudy it has a
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: kind of cloudy layer over it. I guess he's describing
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: the fact that the old man has a cataract on
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: his eye, which is a condition that happens in people's
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: eyes when they get old, and it just means that
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: the I guess, the lens of the eye becomes clouded.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: So this old man's got this kind of cloudy, pale eye,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: which is disturbing this narrator, and that's his reason for
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: deciding to kill the man in order to get rid
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of this eye so it doesn't disturb him anymore. And
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: he talks about how carefully and how how cleverly he
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: plans the deed, and essentially what he does is, for
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: seven nights, he sneaks into the old man's room. He
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: opens the door a little bit, and he puts in
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a lantern which is covered. A lantern is a light,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and it's covered up, and he opens the cover of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the lamp a little bit and it sends out a
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: ray of light onto the old man's face. And he
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: does this very very slowly, so the old man doesn't notice.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: But every time he shines the light on the old
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: man's eye, the eyes closed, and so he can't bring
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: himself to actually commit the murder. On the eighth night,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: he does it again, very carefully, very slowly, sneaks his
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: head and this lantern into the room in the darkness.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: But he makes a noise while he's doing it, and
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the old man sits up, and he can't see anything
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: because it's pitch black. But the old man sits up,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: and for an hour, the old man is sitting there,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: wide awake, and the narrator stays completely motionless with the
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: lantern closed, and basically, after a while he can't take
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: it anymore. He decided he decides to open the lantern,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and the light shines out onto the eye, and the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: eye is open this time, and so with the eye open,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: the narrator decides this is his moment to actually do
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the deed, to do the act, and he leaps into
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: the room in a sort of frenzy, and I guess
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: he smothers the man to death. He kind of drags
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: him onto the floor and shoves the bed on top
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: of him. I suppose he kind of smothers him so
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that the old man can't breathe. He's maybe under the pillow,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: under the covers and can't breathe. And the narrator describes
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: hearing this noise. That's the thing. Actually, while he's waiting
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: for the old man to move or do something, he
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: can hear. He says, he can hear the sound of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the old man's heart beating. It's this sort of what
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: he describes as a low muffled sound, like the sound
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: of a watch that's wrapped in cotton wool or something
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: like that. He can hear this beating sound and it
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: gets louder and faster, and it's this beating heart that
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: drives the narrator quite mad, and that's where he chooses
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to leap in and murder the old man. And even
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: after the old man has died, he can still hear
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the heart beating, and eventually it stops. The old man
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: is dead, and it's still in the middle of the night.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: It's totally dark, and he decides to hide the body,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and he chops up the body. He chops the head off,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: cuts the legs and arms off, and actually hides the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: bits of the body under the floorboards of the old
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: man's room. So he opens up the wooden boards of
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the floor and put these body parts into the floor
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and then closes the floor again. And he does it
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: without leaving any trace. There's no bloodstains anywhere. He does
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: it all very carefully, without leaving any evidence. And just
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: as he's finished doing this, there's a knock at the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: door and it's the police, because a neighbor heard the
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: sound of the old man's scream briefly just before he
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: was murdered, and this person is called the police, and
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: so the police turn up to investigate, and the narrator
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: is quite happy to show them around because he's very
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: proud of himself for having hidden any evidence of the crime.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: He shows the police around the place, shows them the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: money that the old man has that hasn't been stolen.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: He says, the old man is out out of the city,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: he's in the country for a few days, and he's
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: so confident. He sets up a couple of chairs in
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the old man's room and he sits on the very
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: spot where the man's body buried under the floorboards, and
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: they talk, but slowly the narrator starts to lose his
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: mind again, and he slowly starts getting bothered by this
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: beating heart, this sound that only he can hear, no
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: one else can hear it. So he's in imagining this sound,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the sound of this beating heart that gets louder and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: louder and louder, and it starts to drive him crazy.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: He starts kind of speaking very quickly and very loudly
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: in front of the police officers, and he starts to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: get very very agitated, and he's being driven crazy by
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: this beating heart sound that they can't hear. And he's
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: driven so mad, and he's made so anxious by it
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that Eventually he confesses the crime. He tells them that
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: he did it, and he orders them to you know,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: tear up the planks and shows them the dismembered corpse
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: of the old man. Okay, what a lovely story, all right.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to go through the storyline by line
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: in a second so you can understand perhaps some of
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the words or phrases that you didn't get before. And
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: i'll do that now. I've got some comments about what
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the story means. That essentially, it's all about madness. It
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: is about guilt, It's about the unreliable narrator. As I said,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: it's also about the nature of reality, the blurring of
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: the distinction between the narrator's internal reality and the reality outside,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and the way these two things don't quite match up together.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: And it's you know, really talking about what is it?
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: How do we really know what's real and what's imagined?
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: What is a hallucination and what's reality? And you know,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this is psychological horror. So let's look at vocabulary then,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and maybe I'll come back to those themes at the end.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: But really what we need to do is focus on
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: understanding the story. So let's have a look at some vocabulary,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and so let's read through the story again, and I'm
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: going to clarify all the details line by line, especially
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: certain items of vocabulary which are highlighted in orange on
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the PDF. So here are some things to consider. So
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: what does the word or phrase mean? What does each
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: highlighted word or phrase actually mean, How is it used
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: in the story. And is this word or phrase still
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: used today or is it old fashioned? If it's not
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: still used today, what modern equivalent would work. So we'll
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: start with the title of the story, the tell tale Heart.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So tell tale in this case is an adjective. It's
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that so tell tale heart. We would also say things
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: like the tell tale signs of something. For example, I
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: don't know what would it be like, the tell tale
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: signs that your partner is cheating on you, or the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: tell tale signs that you're children are smoking cigarettes. For example.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: There these little signs that reveal the truth, little signs
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: that kind of give away the truth. Okay, for example,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: tell tale signs that your children are smoking. You know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: maybe you can smell the You can smell the smell
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: all day. You get the sense they're hiding something in
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: a draw or they wash their hands every time they
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: come in, you know, things like that. So these are
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: telltale signs, in this case, the telltale heart. It's that
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: it's the heart which gives away the man's guilt. Okay,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: all right, so let's let's begin. So true nervous, very
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: dreadfully nervous. I had been. So I want to mention
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the word nervous and the word angry. Okay. Yeah, So
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: we've got the word nervous, We've got the word angry.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: We've also got the word stressed. Okay. And I've noticed,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: from being a teacher for many years that learners of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: English often get these words mixed up. Actually, So generally,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: you feel nervous before you go to the dentist. You
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: feel nervous before you have an exam, right, and you
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: bite your fingernails. You know, you can't relax. That's nervous.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Angry is when I don't know what's happened. Let's say
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: you're trying to find a parking space. You've gone to
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Ikea to buy some furniture on a Saturday, and you're
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: in the Ikea car park. You're driving around and around
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: trying to find a parking space. You find a parking space,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: but suddenly someone else zoom zooms into the space and
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: steals the space in front of you. Ah, you'd feel
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: angry in that case, right. And then stressed is if
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you're under a lot of pressure. For example, you've got
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of work to do, you've got a deadline
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: to meet, or maybe you're late. You're late for a
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: very important appointment and you're rushing through the train station. Ah,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: that's stressed, okay, So I just wanted to make a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: distinction between those things. You've also got, yeah, pissed off
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: as well, which is a slightly rude slang expression, which
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: is similar to angry, frustrated, annoyed, pissed off. God, just
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I can't stand going to Ikea on a Saturday. God,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: it's just so crowded. That's annoyed or pissed off, okay.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: But nervous is that feeling that you would have, like anxious,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: before you have an exam or before going to the dentist.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: So the narrator describes themselves as being nervous, dreadfully nervous dreadfully.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: It's like saying very nervous. But you can use dreadfully
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: before some negative adjective, and it really sort of emphasizes it.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: So dreadfully boring, dreadfully dreadfully ignorant, dreadfully nervous, dreadfully hungry,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: dreadfully tired, dreadfully nervous. I had been and am, But
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: why will you say I am mad? The disease had
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. So what
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: disease is he talking about? I don't know. There's backstory,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I suppose, but apparently this person had some kind of disease.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: What was it? I don't know. There are certain little
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: indications that tell us why this man has lost his mind,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: and it seems that maybe he has spent a lot
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: of time on his own. Maybe he's been locked in
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: his room recovering from a disease, an illness, a sickness.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It's not clear, but it seems that this person has
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: recently recovered from some sort of physical illness or maybe
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a mental illness. We don't know, But according to him,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the disease sharpened his senses. So to sharpen your senses,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: if your senses are sharp, and your senses are site, smell, taste, touch, hearing, right,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: So his senses had become very sharp. So it's very sensitive,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: very precise. So his ability to hear things had become
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: very clear. His vision was very sharp. He could see
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: things very clearly, He could hear things very clearly. The
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: disease had sharpened his senses, not dulled them. So the
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: opposite in this case of sharp is dull. Sharp. Also
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: is for you know, things like a knife could be sharp, right,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: a knife or a pair of scissors could be very sharp,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: in which case it would cut things very easily. And
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the opposite of that is blunt. So, for example, a
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: knife that doesn't cut his blunt or dull as well,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: you might say that a knife is dull. More common
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to say that it's blunt. But anyway, saying that this
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: disease had made his senses more sensitive, not the opposite.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So it had sharpened the senses, not dulled them. Dull. Yeah,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: we also say dull and boring. Dull can also be
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: a synonym of boring as well, right, Okay. Above all
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: was the sense of hearing acute. If something is acute,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it means it's again very sensitive, very specific, kind of
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: very keen, very sharp, right, synonym of those things. So
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: his sense of hearing was very acute and the narrator
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: believes that he's hearing all these things, and his hearing,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: his ability to hear, has become so powerful. I mean,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: we believe that he's probably imagining a lot of it.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: A lot of these things will be hallucinations. Right, I
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I heard many things in hell. How then am I
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: mad hearken and observe how healthily I can tell you
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the whole story? Hearken This is an old fashioned word.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: We don't use it anymore. It's basically a way of saying, listen,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: listen carefully. Hearken means listen, listen to me. Okay, listen
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and observe, or see how healthily, how calmly I can
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: tell you the whole story. So he says that he's
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: going to tell us the story in a very healthy
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and calm way. But he doesn't. He becomes very agitated
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and quite animated while telling the story, so he's not
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: healthy or calm at all. It's impossible to say how
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: first the idea entered my brain. It's impossible to say
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: how the idea first entered my brain is how I
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: would say it these days. But once conceived, meaning once
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: the idea had been initially created, right, it haunted me
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: day and night, haunted. Now, normally a ghost haunts something,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: it haunts a building, meaning the ghost stays in the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: building and sort of you know, scares people regularly. But
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: an idea can haunt you as well, meaning it stays
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: with you and is constantly in your mind and disturbing you.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So the idea he had, the idea to murder the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: old man, and the idea stayed in his head and
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: sort of bothered and disturbed him. It haunted him day
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and night. Object there was none, meaning there was no
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: real thing that he wanted from doing it. Passion, there
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: was none, So it wasn't that He's saying, this was
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: a completely cold and premeditated murder, which is not I
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: think in his defense. Right, This is not in his defense.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Normally in a murder trial in a courtroom, if someone
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: is being tried for murder, thinking about the crime in
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: advance and planning it carefully in a sober and clear
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: minded way, this makes it worse for you. You spend
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: more time in prison if you think about it very carefully,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: if you premeditate the murder. But anyway, he's saying there
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: was no passion involved in it, meaning there was no
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: strong sense of emotion. It was all coldly calculated. He said,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: I loved the old man, so there was no sense
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: of like strong hatred or anything for this old man.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: He loved him. And the old man had never wronged me.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: He'd never wronged me. To wrong someone means to do
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: something wrong against them, you know, like maybe stealing something
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: from him or betraying him in some way. So the
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: old man had never wronged me, never done anything wrong
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to me. We still used the phrase. I suppose it
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: sounds a bit old fashioned, but it's not completely it's
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: not completely unused today. He'd never given me insult, I
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: would say, he'd never insulted me for his gold. I
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: had no desire, meaning I didn't want any of his gold.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: And then I think it was his eye, Yes, it
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: was this. One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: so one of his eyes looked like a vulture's eye.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: We talked about what a vulture is. One of those
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: animals in the sort of the planes of Africa. I
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: understand they probably exist in lots of other places too.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: They fly very high in the sky. They saw in
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: this looking down upon the earth looking for dead animals,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: and then they come down and eat the remains of
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: the corpse of the dead animal. So one of his
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: eyes looked like a vulture's eye, pale blue eye with
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: a film over it. A film in this case. Well,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: a film is like a thin layer, a thin layer,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I guess he's describing the cataract of this old man's eye.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: So there was like a thin layer over the lens
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: of like a kind of cloudy stuff. I don't know what,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: but the eye was not completely clear. There was a
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: layer of cloudy something over the eye. So a film,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: obviously we think of a film as like a movie, right,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: But the origin of the word film is from the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: actual film tape. Is it tape? You know, the film
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that would be you to project the movie onto a screen, right.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: The light is projected through the film. We used to
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: put film in cameras. It's a kind of long material
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: that when light is applied to it, it leaves a trace.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: And that's how photographs and movies were originally made with film,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: like a thin sort of plastic layer, not actually plastic.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: So that's film in terms of a movie. But a
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: film is just like a thin layer. Let's say so this,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the eye had a film over it whenever it fell
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: upon me, meaning whenever I looked at it, whenever it
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: looked at me, or you know, whenever the eye pointed
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: at me, whenever it fell upon me. My blood ran cold,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: which is quite a nice idiom. If your blood runs cold,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: it means you just get that feeling of like like
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: a horrible, uncomfortable, disgusting feeling, like maybe when you think
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: about something very scary and it makes you you get
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a shiver down your spine. Ah, my blood ran cold.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: It's like your blood runs cold through your body. Yeah.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: And so, by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: By degrees means little, by little, very gradually, I made
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: up my mind, or I decided. I mean, that's common expression,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I made up my mind to take the life of
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the old man, to take someone's life again, this is
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: still a commonly used expression, meaning to kill, to take
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the life of the old man, to kill the old man.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: And thus meaning and so in this way rid myself
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: of the eye forever. I wouldn't put it like that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: these days, I think we would say to get rid of,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: to get rid of the eye, forever right, so that
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: it's no longer here. So it's gone. Now this is
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the point you fancy me mad. Now, Fancy is quite
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: an interesting word because I can think of three different
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: meanings of it. Here it's used as a verb. So
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I'll talk about fancy as an adjective, and then I'll
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: talk about two meanings of fancy as a verb. So
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: let's start with fancy the adjective, which is not how
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: it's used here. So fancy the adjective would be like, oh,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: this is a fancy restaurant. You know, that's a fancy car.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I like if you're wearing a very fancy dress. So
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that word fancy means kind of very nice looking, quite
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: expensive looking, nicely decorated. So, oh, this is a very
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: fancy restaurant, isn't it. Love really fancy hotel you're staying in.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: There will be an expensive hotel with you decorated very richly.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: That's fancy. Or a fancy car would be like a nice,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: expensive or very interesting looking car, and a fancy fancy
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: clothes would be very nice looking clothes, maybe very shiny
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: clothes that you might wear to a party or something
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: like that. So that's one meaning of fancy as an adjective,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: but that's not how it's used here. Then we've got
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: fancy as a verb, so we'll start with this meaning
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: you fancy you fancy me mad, don't you? So this
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: is slightly the probably the old fashioned use of the
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: word fancy, And in this case it means you think
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: that I am mad, You believe that I'm mad. You
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: reckon that I'm mad, don't you? Okay, you fancy me mad?
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Meaning youth, you think I'm mad? So that's old fashioned.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that now. I would say you think
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I'm mad? You you reckon I'm mad? So that's that.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: And then there's another use of the verb fancy, which
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: means want basically, or you want to have something like,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: oh it's hot today, I really fancy an ice cream
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: or a fancy Do you fancy a cup? Anyone fancy
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: a pint? Meaning does anyone want to have a pint
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: of beer in the pub? Anyone fancy a pint? There's
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: a pub around the corner. Does anyone want to have
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: a pint of beer? Do you fancy a cup of tea?
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Would you like to have a cup of tea? Oh?
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Fancy and ice cream. I'd like to have an ice cream.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: So that's another meaning of fancy, and that's commonly used today.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Do you fancy a cup of tea? Right? But this
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: one is old fashioned use of the word fancy, meaning
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: believe or think you fancy I'm mad, you fancy me mad?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Also the grammar of that is quite old fashioned as well.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I would say you think that I am mad, or
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: you think I'm mad mad. Men know nothing, but you
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: I proceeded, meaning how wisely, how cleverly I continued, how
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: cleverly I acted with what caution? So caution, with what
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: care when you're being very careful with what foresight? Foresight
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: is like forward planning when you see you kind of
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: act very carefully because you're thinking in advance, planning in
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: advance with foresight, do something with foresight, with what dissimulation?
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: I went to work. This is a very old fashioned word,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: very formal word that is very rarely used today, so
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: you probably don't need to worry about it, really, But
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: it means it's like deception. It's where you're maybe lying
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: or concealing the truth, doing something without people realizing you're
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: doing it right. So with deception, with secrecy, let's say, okay,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I was never kinder to the old man than during
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the whole week before I killed him, which is an
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: interesting line from any story. I was never kinder to
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: the old man than during the whole week before I
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: killed him. So clearly that he's trying to make the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: old man feel a false sense of security, right, kind
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: of being very kind to him, so that the old
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: man has no idea that he's actually plotting to kill him.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: his door. So the latch of the door is the
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: thing that keeps the door closed. These days, you know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: doors have door handles or doorknobs and you turn the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: handle or turn the knob of the door. But some
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: old buildings would have latches, which is like a little
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: metal bar that sits on a hook and you kind
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of push the bar up you unlatch the door. So
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the latch is the little metal bar that's on a hook,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: And to open the door, you lift the latch of
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: the door to open it, to release it from the hook.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So that's the latch. I turned. The latch turned something
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to lift the latch to open the door. I turned
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the latch of his door and opened it oh so gently.
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: And then when i'd made an opening sufficient for my head.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: So sufficient again, it's quite a formal word. A more
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: general word would be enough E N O U g h. Enough.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: So if it's sufficient, it's enough. Right. So, when he'd
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: opened the door enough for his head, so it was
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: big enough for his head. He then put in a
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: dark lantern. So, as I said before, a lantern is
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: like an old fashioned light. It probably has a candle
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: in it, or maybe there's an there's oil in it
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: that burns. He puts in a dark lantern. This is
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a lantern that's covered up. Okay, so it's actually dark.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And if you open up one of the doors or
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: one of the I don't know what it would be
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: openings on the lantern, it can reveal light. So he
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: put in a dark lantern, all close, used closed, so
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: that no light shone out. Shon is the past form
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: of shine, of course, shine shone shon, yes, saho ny,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: so that no light shone out. And then I thrust
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: in my head, so thrust in, move in kind of quickly, right,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: he moved in. He moved his head in quickly he
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: thrust it in. So to thrust something is to move
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: something quickly forwards. Okay, oh, you would have laughed to
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: see how cunningly I thrust it in. So to be
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: cunning is to be clever and kind of evil. We
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: often say that a fox at the animal, a fox
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: is cunning. So cunning is like careful with the careful
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: in a very evil sort of way, he thrust his
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: head cunningly. I don't know how how you actually thrust
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: your head into a room cunningly, but you can imagine
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: him kind of like putting his head in the room
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: with an evil look on his face. I moved it slowly,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: very very slowly, so that I might not disturb the
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: my whole head within the opening so far that I
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: could see him as he lay upon his bed. So
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: he put the took him an hour to get his
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: head into the room enough so that he could see
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: the old man lying down on his bed. And then he,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: you know, he says, ha, would a mad man have
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: been so wise as this? So again there he is
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: trying to prove that he's not mad by saying Look,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: look how clever and wise and careful I was. You know,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not mad. Look Look how careful carefully I'm acting.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: He's like, I don't know, mate, I think you're acting
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: extremely in an extremely disturbed way. So his definition of
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: as I said before, his definition of madness is someone
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: who can't think straight, doesn't think clearly. But you can
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: still be very premeditated in your actions and still be
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: quite mad, I think. And then when my head was
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously. So
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: he opened the lantern oh so cautiously, for the hinges creaked.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: The hinges are the things that connect a door that
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: swings open to whatever it's attached to, normally the wall right.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: So the door is attached to the wall by hinges,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and the hinges allow the door to swing open and closed.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: So those are the hinges. So he opened the lantern
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: cautiously because the hinges creaked. Creaked means they made a
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: noise like that the door creaks on its hinges. I
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: undid it, meaning I opened it just so much that
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. Ray
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: are a why means a little beam of light, A
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: ray of light. Okay, a ray of light comes down
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: from the sky through the clouds, a ray of light
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: comes through the window, or a ray of light comes
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: from the lantern and fell upon the vulture eye. So
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: it shone onto the vulture eye, this particular eye that
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: disturbed the narrator so much. And this I did for
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: seven long nights. So that structure this I did is
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: old fashioned. And we would just say, and I did
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: this for seven long nights every night, just at midnight.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: But I found the eye always closed, and so it
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: was impossible to do the work. For it was not
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: so here four here, for it was not the old
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: man who vexed me. So this four means because normally
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: four fois is used as a time expression, like for
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: five minutes, for ten hours, for three days. But here
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: at four means because we can get a few different words.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: That mean because you've got obviously, because you've got four,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: you can have since as well, since can mean because
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I sat down, since I was tired, or
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: as can also be because I sat down as I
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: had been working so hard. Yes, so it was impossible
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: to do the work, for it was not the old
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: man who vexed me, but his evil eye. Vexed me
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: means bothered me, disturbed me, annoyed me. Right, it's quite
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: a nice word, although we don't use it that much
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: these days. It would be bothered me, I suppose would
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: be the better one, would be the more modern one.
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: But still that's quite a nice word. So it wasn't
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the old man that bothered him, but it was his
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: evil eye. And every morning when the day broke, so
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: daybreak or when the day breaks, or when the day broke,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: this means when the day begun, when the sun came up.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: So daybreak is that moment when the sun comes up
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: at dawn every morning, when the day broke, So this
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: is after the night has finished. Every morning, I went
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: boldly into the chamber. So he walked confidently into the chamber,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: into the room, and spoke courageously to him. So he
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: spoke to him confidently and boldly, without any sort of
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: shyness or any resi without being reserved at all. He
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: just walked into the room and spoke confidently to the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: old man, calling him by name in a hearty tone,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: good morning, good morning, William, or whatever his name would be.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: In a hearty tone. Hearty is kind of like strong
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: and friendly and pleasant. Good morning, William, HOWI this morning?
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: He spoke in a hearty tone. That's an old fashioned
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: word as well. We would say maybe friendly, warm, something
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: like that these days, and inquiring how he'd passed the night.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: So that's formal and old fashioned. Just asking would be
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: how we'd put it today. So I just walked confidently
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: into the room, calling him by name in a friendly,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: warm tone, and asking how he'd passed the night. Good morning, William,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: did you sleep well? So you see, he would have
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: been a very profound old man. Indeed, to suspect that
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: every night I looked in upon him while he slept. Profound,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I suppose in this case meaning sort of very clever,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: very deep, deep and clever. He would have been very
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: deep and clever to suspect me right to believe that
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: some thing was going wrong, to suspect that every night,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: just at twelve, I looked in upon him, looked in
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: upon him. The upon part of that is old fashioned,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: we would say, looked in on him. To look in
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: on someone is to like open the door, look in.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: You're right to check in on someone or look in
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: on someone, like for example, when my daughter's doing her
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: homework in her bedroom, or she's supposed to be doing
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: her homework. I might look in on her, just not knock, h.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: I mean you are right, has a homework going yet?
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: It's okayod have you finished yet? I looked in on her.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Here it's looked in upon him. On the eighth night,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: I was more than usually cautious. There's that word cautious again,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: meaning careful in opening the door. A watch's minute hand
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: moves more quickly than did mine. So a watch has
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: several hands on it, right, certainly the old fashioned analog watches,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: not the digital ones. But watches have hands. There's the
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: hour hand, there's the minute hand, and the second hand.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: The second hand goes tick tick tick tick every second,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and the minute hand moves very slowly. If you look
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: at it carefully, you can see the minute hand very
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: slowly moving as the time passes from one minute to
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the next. The hour hand moves even more slowly. But anyway,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: that's that's a watch's minute hand. It's the hand that
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: moves round every minute, right from one minute to the next, right,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: So basically it moves very slowly. So a watch's minute
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: hand moves more quickly than did mine. So he's saying
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: that when he opened the door, his hand moved even
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: more slowly than the minute hand of a watch. Never
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: before that night had I felt the extent of my
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: own powers. So this is, you know, this structure, never
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: before had I done something? Is quite a formal sounding structure.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: We still use that kind of negative inversion today, and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: it's quite an emphatic structure. Right, Never before had I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: seen such fantastic, such a fantastic football match. It sounds
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: old fashioned and quite formal. I So I guess a
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: more normal way of putting it would be I had
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: you know, I'd never felt the extent of my own
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: powers before that night, I'd never done something before. Here,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: it's never before had I done something? Okay, all right,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: so never before that night had I felt the extent
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: of my own powers. So the extent of something we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: use this a lot these days, to what extent and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: to an extent? So the extent of something is how much? Right?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: So if someone says, to what extent did you understand
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: the text? It means how much did you understand it?
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: And I agree with you to an extent, but means
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I agree with you a little bit like I agree
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: with part of what you said, but not completely. I
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: agree with you to an extent, but blah blah blah. Right,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: So the extent or an extent means a certain amount
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: or how much. Okay, never before that night had I
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: felt the extent of my own powers, meaning, never before
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: that night had I felt how much you know, my
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: powers had developed? Or I'd never felt the amount of
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: my powers, of my sagacity. All right, I'll be honest.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: It's not a word that's it's not a word I use.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: It's an old fashioned formal word good judgment or understanding
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: judgment understanding. Maybe we would say shrewd shrewdness s h
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: R s h r e w d n E s s,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: or the adjective shrewd is a more common word means
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: your careful judgment. Yeah, I could scarcely contain my feelings
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of triumph. Slightly old fashioned formal language. Again, I could
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: hardly contain scarcely is the is the old fashioned part there?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: And we would say hardly meaning almost couldn't. I could
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: hardly contain my feelings of triumph. So he's opening the
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: door going, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm how brilliant I am. Sorry,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: that's so fantastic, and he's holding onto those feelings, right,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: I could scarcely contain I could hardly hold on to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: my feelings of triumphs. So we wanted to go yes.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: But he had to hold on to them, he had
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: to contain them, and he almost couldn't do it to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: think that there I was opening the door little by little,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: and he not even to dream of my secret deeds
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: or thoughts. Your deeds are the things you do, your actions.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: I fairly chuckled at the idea. So to chuckle is
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: again still a common word. It means to laugh in
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: a certain way. So that's to chuckle. So if you
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: tell someone a joke, they might chuckle. That's to chuckle.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: So we know laugh ha, that's to laugh, And to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: chuckle is to kind of go. It's kind of like
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: a low, a low, small laugh. Right. And there's also giggle,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: which is he like schoolgirls giggle, the sort of stereotype,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: and chuckle is I chuckled at the idea. So he
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: was so delighted that the old man had no idea
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: what was going on that he was like oooh, he
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, so
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: maybe the old man heard him four in because he
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Startled means
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: surprised by something. Now you may think that I drew back,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: meaning you may think that I moved back out of
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: the room. But no, his room was as black as pitch.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: It was pitch black, still a phrase we used today.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Pitch is like an oily, a black oily paint, and
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: it's very very dark black. So pitch black or as
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: black as pitch means extremely black. Pitch black means very dark,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: so you can't see anything. His room was as black
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: as pitch, or, as we would say today, pitch black,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: with the thick darkness. For the shutters were close fastened.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Shutters are like doors on the outside of a window.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: You close the shutters at night to get total darkness
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: in your room, or maybe if there's a storm coming,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: you close the shutters and you can lock or fasten
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the shutters maybe from the inside. Fasten them means lock
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: them tight. Right, So the shutters were close fastened through
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: fear of robbers. So the shutters on the window were
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: totally closed and locked. So it was pitch black. And
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: so I knew that he couldn't see the opening of
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: so he knows that the room is completely dark. And
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: despite the fact the old man has apparently just woken
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: up in bed because he heard something, the narrator knows
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the room is pitch black, so he continues entering the room.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I had my head in and was about to open
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the lantern when my thumb slipped on the tin fastening.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: So he's about to open the lantern, and his thumb,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: that's like, it's not technically a finger, but it's one
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: of the digits on your hand, you know, the most
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: important one, the one that you use to play computer
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: games and do plenty of other things. But you know,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: of course, you know your thumb. You know your own thumb.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: I hope you do, anyway, right, Anyway, his thumb slipped
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: on the tin fastening, so I guess this is like
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: the little lock on the lantern. His thumb slipped on it,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and it made a noise, and the old man sprang up.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Sprang is the past form of the verb spring, meaning
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: suddenly jump up, So boying the old man sprang up
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: in the bed, so he suddenly sat up in the bed,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: crying out, meaning shouting, who's there? Okay, the narrator continues,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I kept quite still and said nothing for a whole hour.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: I did not move a muscle. It's quite a nice
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: expression to move or didn't move a muscle, meaning he
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: didn't move at all. He didn't. He stayed perfectly still.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: And in the meantime I didn't hear him lie down.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: So during that hour, he didn't hear the old man
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: lie down. So the old man was sitting up listening
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: very intently. Meanwhile the narrator is standing there completely motionless.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: He didn't move a muscle. The old man was still
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: sitting up in the bed, listening, just as I have
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: done night after night, hearkening to the death watches in
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: the wall. Now, this is a this is an interesting
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: line in the story, So that he's saying that the
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: old man was sitting up in the bed listening, and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: then he says, just as I have done night after night.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: So he refers to refers back to what he's done.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: So apparently there have been many nights when the narrator
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: himself has sat up in bed listening, right, hearkening to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: the death watches in the wall. Hearkening, meaning listening now
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the death watches. This is interesting because he does talk
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: about this noise that's been disturbing him. He describes it
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: as the noise of a watch going tick tick tick
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: tick tick, or maybe the beating of a heart, which
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: he compares it to the death watches. In the wall.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: This actually refers to death watch beetles. These are insects
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: that can live in walls and they make a sound.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: They make a tapping sound in the wall. So if
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: you have an in an infestation of death watch beetles
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: that live in the walls of old homes, they can
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: actually make this tap tap tap tap tap tap sound.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: And I think there's old superstitions that say that if
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: you hear the sound of the death watch beetle in
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: the wall, that it's a sign that somebody is going
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: to die. You know, there's like superstitions about them. But
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: it's this is interesting because it suggests that maybe this
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: narrator has been driven mad by these repetitive sounds that
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: have kept him up at night, that you know, he's
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: been hearing these tapping sounds in the walls. So it's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: kind of revealing of the narrator's mental state that he's
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: been hearing the sounds of these beetles making these noises
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: in the walls, and it's kept him up at night,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: and maybe it's been driving him insane or has contributed
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: to it presently. Meaning just then I heard a slight
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: groan a groan as a noise that a person would
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: make like like that, and I knew it was the
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: groan of mortal ten error. So the old man is
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: terribly afraid, deeply disturbed and scared. So he's like, oh,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: something like that. It was not the not a groan
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: of pain. Ah, I suppose that's a groan of pain,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: isn't it. Ah, Something like that would be a groan
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: of pain or a groan of grief. So grief is
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: a feeling of deep sadness normally after someone you love
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: has died, as grown of grief, which would be like
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: mm hmm, how about my sound effect skills different groaning
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: sounds that would be a groan of grief. But no,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: it was the low stifled sound. So stifled means that
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like if something is stifled, it means
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: one is trying to cover it so it doesn't make
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: too much noise. The low stifled sound that arises, meaning
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: that comes up from the bottom of the soul when
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: overcharged with or awe or is a sort of feeling
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: of amazement when faced with yeah, something profound. So in
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: this case, maybe the old man suddenly realized that he
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: was in danger, that there was mortal danger, that his
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: life was in danger, and so that sense of awe,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: that sense of profound sort of profundity, that sense that
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: like there was something really really dangerous about to happen,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: this groan just came out from him like oh. And
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: then narrator says, I knew the sound well many a night,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: just at midnight, when all the world slept. It has
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: welled up from my own bosom to well up, meaning
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: to come up. Now, a well is a hole in
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: the ground where water comes up, like drinkable water. That's
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: a well. So water wells up, it means it comes up.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: And we actually say I was welling up is meaning
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: I was starting to cry. But in this case it
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: was a sound that has welled up from his own bosom,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: meaning his chest. So this is a sound that's come
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: up from his own body, deepening with its dreadful echo.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: The terrors that distracted me. So this narrator is a
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: very disturbed person, and he talks about the fact that
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: he knows this this groaning sound, because it's come from
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: his you know, he's made that sound himself in the
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: middle of the night because of terrors that distracted him.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: So he's you know, he's on one hand saying, I'm
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: not mad, you know, I'm totally sane, and then on
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: the other hand he's saying, but I'm deeply disturbed by
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: the sounds of these frightening sounds in the middle of
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: the night and terrors which distract me or distracted me.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: So clearly this person is very disturbed because terrors they have,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: like fearful thoughts and feelings in the middle of the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: night that cause him to make these groaning sounds. I say,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: I knew it well. I knew what the old man
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: felt and pitied him, meaning felt sorry for him, although
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: I chuckled at heart. So on one hand, he feels
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: sorry for the old man, but on the other hand,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: he's again laughing because he knows how clever he is.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I chuckled at heart. I knew that he'd been lying
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: awake ever since the first slight noise when he earned
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: upon him. So he's kind of delighted because he knows
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: exactly how the old man is feeling, and he's relishing
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: this feeling of being in control of this old man,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: this poor old man. He'd been trying to fancy them causeless,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: so his fears. The old man had been there in
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: the bed with his fears growing, and the old man
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: had been trying to consider them to be causeless, meaning
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: that there was no reason, no cause for him to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: have those fears, of those worries or doubts. He'd been
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: in bed going, oh, no, no, no, it's fine. I'm
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: sure it's nothing. So he'd been trying to fancy his
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: fears causeless. Oh I'm not scared of anything. It's not real.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: But he couldn't, so he'd been struggling to come to
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: terms with his fear. He'd been saying to himself, it's
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: nothing but the wind in the chimney. So the wind
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: in the chimney. The chimney is what is the long
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: thing that connects the fireplace all the way up to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: the roof, so that the smoke from the fire goes
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: up the chimney and out of the top of the
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: chimney into the air. So the wind in the chimney,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: as you might know on a windy day, you get
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: the sound of sounds in the chimney. So he's saying
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: to himself, Oh, it's nothing but the wind in the chimney,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: or it's only a mouse crossing the floor. So you
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: might hear a kind of like a quick, kind of
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: little sound or something which could be he might think, oh,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: it's just a mouse crossing the floor. Or it's merely
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: a cricket, merely meaning only just just a cricket, which
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: is like a little insect that might make a noise
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. They normally make that, right,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: So maybe, oh, it was just a cricket, just merely
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: a cricket which has made a single chirp. So a
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: chirp is a sound like an insect or a little
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: bird would make like a So it's just a cricket
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: that made a single chirp, like a little noise from
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: a cricket. It's just nothing. Yes, he's been trying to
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: comfort himself with these suppositions. Suppositions are things that you suppose, well,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: I suppose it was just a little cricket or maybe
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: a mouse, or the wind in the chimney. These are suppositions.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: But he'd found all in vain, meaning pointless, useless, that
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: didn't work. That's quite old fashioned language. If you do
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: something in vain, you do it and it doesn't work.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: It was pointless to do it because it didn't work.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: All in vain. And this is pretty dark what he says. Now.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: He says because Death, in approaching him, had stalked with
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: his black shadow before him. So as Death, while approaching him,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: while going towards the old man, had stalked, meaning sort
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: of walked very carefully, like a hunter slowly stalking the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: animal it wants to kill. So Death had stalked him
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: with his black shadow before him. So Death is approaching him,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: and the shadow of death is in front of death,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: and it's covering the old man, and it's enveloped the victim,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: so covered him like an envelope you put a letter
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: in an envelope. In this case, the shadow has enveloped
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the victim, covered him so that the victim doesn't know
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: what's going on. He can't see what's happening. And it
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: him to feel like this, the mournful meaning, the dreadful,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: sund dark feeling right, this dark, depressing, sad influence of
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: the unperceived shadow. So the shadow that covered him made
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: him feel fearful and frightened and hopeless. And the shadow
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: was unperceived, meaning the old man didn't realize that the
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: shadow was there. He didn't notice it. He didn't perceive it,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: meaning see it or feel it. It was unperceived. So
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: this dark influence of this unnoticed shadow that caused him
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: to feel although he neither saw nor heard to feel
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: the presence of my head within the room. So somehow
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: it was the shadow of death that caused the old
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: man to feel that the narrator was in the room,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: although he couldn't hear him. So the old Man's had
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: this dark premonition, and he knew something was going on.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: When I'd waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: him lie down, I resolved, meaning finally decided to open
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: a little a very little crevice in the lantern. So
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: he decided to open a little crevice, a little crack
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: in the lantern, a tiny little just open it, a tiny,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: little bit, so a little piece of light could come out,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: so I opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily. If
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: you do something stealthily, it means you do something secretly
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: like a ninja. You can't imagine how stealthily until at length,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: meaning until eventually a single dim ray. Remember a ray
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: is like a beam of light, A dim ray not
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: very bright, So dim is the opposite of bright. So
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: a single dim ray like a very small, not very
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: bright shaft of light. Like the thread of the spider.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: Why is it the spider? I would say the thre
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: of a spider, but I suppose it's the thread of
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: the spider, meaning the spider as a species. Sometimes we
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: use the with animals when we're talking about the species,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Like the cheetah is the fastest land animal, the blue
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: whale is the largest animal on earth. The African elephant
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: is the largest land animal. You know, so we do
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: use the before species of animals like that to refer
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: to the whole species. So a single dim ray, like
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the thread of the spider, shot out from the crevice.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I mean he came out of the crack in the
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: lantern and fell upon the vulture eye landed on the
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: vulture eye, and it was open, wide, open, completely open,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: and I grew furious. So he became very angry as
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: I gazed upon it. As I as I looked at it,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: that eye, I saw it with perfect distinctness, meaning perfect clarity.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: So he saw the eye perfectly clear, all adul blue,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: meaning a sort of not very clear blue color, with
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: a hideous veil over it, hideous meaning horrible, disgusting, ye yuck,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: hideous veil like a covering or layer. Normally a veil
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: covers a person's face, like a woman when she's getting married.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: We had the word veil in the Shelock Holmes story
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: not too long ago, with a hideous veil over it,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: like a very ugly, disgusting sort of layer over the eye.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: That film that we talked about before, the cataract that
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: chilled the very marrow in my bones, meaning it's made
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: his bones feel deeply cold. The marrow is the soft
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: part in the middle of the bones, So the bone
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: marrow is the core of a bone. It's the soft
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: stuff in the middle, right, So it made his bones
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: feel cold to the very core. But I could see
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: nothing else of the old man's face or person, for
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: upon the damned spot, so he couldn't see anything else.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: He could only see the eye. And it's almost by
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: instinct that as he opened the lantern, the light went
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: directly onto the eye and nowhere else. He sort of
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: seemed to do it by instinct. And now have I
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: not told you that what you mistake for madness is
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: but over acuteness of the senses. So in this again
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: we've got the word acute, or in this case acuteness,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: the noun over acuteness, meaning sensitivity precision of the senses.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: So he's saying what you think is madness is in
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: fact just very clear sense of vision and hearing. Now
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: I say, there came to my ears a low, dull,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: So here's that sound that he hears, and we think
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: it's a hallucination. He suddenly starts to hear this low
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: something like that. He can hear this, this sound like
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: a watch. So again, a watch that you used to
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: tell the time, TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. But as if the
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: watch has been covered in cotton, so it might make
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: a sort of sound, a sort of beating sound. I
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: knew that sound well too. It was the beating of
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: the old man's heart. So he believes at this moment
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: that he can hear the old man's heart beating. But
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that he's already mentioned the fact that he's
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: been bothered in the past by the bye these repetitive sounds.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: When he talked about the sounds of the beatles in
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: the wall, the death Watch beetles with their tapping sounds.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: And now we've got a similar sound that's bothering him again.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: But may he's hallucinating it the sound of the old
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: man's heart. It increased my fury, so his anger. As
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: So as we know, bum dum dumb, dum, dum dumb dumb,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: like beating drums can stimulate a soldier and make them
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: make soldiers in a in a battle feel more courageous,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: in the same way that the beating of the old
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: man's heart suddenly made the man the narrator feel more courageous.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: But even yet meaning but still I refrained, meaning, I
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: held myself back. I scarcely breathed again, hardly breathed, I
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: would say, so I hardly breathed, So he's like hardly
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: even breathing, just breathing a tiny amount. I held the
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: lantern motionless, motionless meaning completely still. I tried how steadily
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: I could maintain the ray of on the eye. So
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: he tried his best to keep the light perfectly, steady,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: steady on the eye. Meantime, the hellish tattoo of the
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: heart increased. Is the use of the word tattoo that
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not really familiar with, because obviously, normally a tattoo
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: is something that people have on their skin, right, Like
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: you get tattoos on your arm or on your legs
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: or other parts of your body. Right you think of
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: like David Beckham, he's got all those tattoos. But here
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: he's talking about a tattoo as a sound. So I've
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: never heard of the word tattoo being used to refer
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: to a sound before. But that's what's happening here. Meantime,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: the hellish tattoo, meaning this horrible sound of the heart increased.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: The old man's terror must have been extreme. It grew louder,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: I say louder every moment, do you mark me well?
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Meaning are you listening carefully? Listening carefully? I have told
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: you that I am nervous, So I am. And now
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: silence of that old house, amid meaning in the middle
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: of in the middle of the dreadful silence, so strange
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. So
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: the narrator, the sound makes him like so terrified. Oh right,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: Yet for some minutes longer I refrained, meaning I held
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: back and stood still. But the beating grew louder louder.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I thought the heart must burst, so that in his mind,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: this heart is beating louder and louder like this, And
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: he thought that the heart was going to burst like
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: a balloon pop. Right, He's getting more and more anxious.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: And now a new anxiety seized me, meaning a new
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: anxiety grabbed him, held him. The sound would be heard
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: by a neighbor. So he was concerned that maybe one
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: of his neighbors would hear the sound of the beating heart.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: The old man's hour had come, meaning this was the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: the old man's moment, meaning this was the moment he
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: was going to die with a loud yell. Yell, is
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: when you shout ah. I threw open the lantern, opened
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: the lantern completely and leapt into the room. So he
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: jumped into the room. The old man shrieked once. To
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: shriek is to scream like ah. Like that, he shrieked
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: once once only in an instant. I dragged him to
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: the floor. So he pulls the old man out of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the bed onto the floor and pulled the heavy bed
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: over him. So I suppose he's he pulls the man
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: onto the floor, and then he pulls the bed on
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: top of the man, and I suppose he at this
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: point he smothers him or something. I then smiled gay.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: So this again is the old fashioned use of the
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: word gay, meaning happy, carefree and happy in the adverb form.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Here I smiled gaily ah to find the deed so
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: far done, the deed meaning the the action that he did.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: So he then smiles in relief, ah when he realizes
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: that he's done it. But for many minutes, the heart
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: beat on with a muffled sound, so he can still
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: hear the sound of the heart with a muffled sound,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: so it's not completely clear. So if something's muffled, it's
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: like if I say hello, how are you, and then
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: I say the same thing muffled. Ha uhh, Right, I
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: muffled my voice by putting putting something over my mouth.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: It's like when you're trying to speak when you've got
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: a mask on. I can't hear you. Your voice is
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: muffled by that mask. I'm on, I'm not ho what Sorry,
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have to take off the mask I got
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: pr Look, sorry, just take off the mask and just
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: it's fine. Okay, Look, I can't take off the mask.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: I've got COVID nineteen. Oh sorry, all right, put the
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: bask back on then, okay, anyway, muffled, so he could
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: still hear the heart with a muffled sound. So this, however,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: did not vex me. I mean, it didn't bother me.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: It would not be heard through the wall. So he's
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: not worried because the neighbor wouldn't be able to hear
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: it at length, meaning eventually, after a long time, it ceased,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: it stopped. The old man was dead. I removed the bed,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: so he removed the bed from the body and examined
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: the corpse. The corpse is a dead body. Yes, he
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: was stone stone dead. So stone dead is still an
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: expression we use today, meaning completely dead. He was stone dead.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: I placed my hand upon the heart. So he placed
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: his hand on the man's chest and held it there
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: many minutes. There was no pulsation. These days we would
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: just say pulse, meaning the feeling of the heart beating.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: There was no pulse. Normally, if you know if someone
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: has passed out or something, you check their pulse. Put
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: your fingers on their neck, put your fingers on their
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: wrist or something to check their pulse. You can feel
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: your pulse if you put your fingers on your neck. Right.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: Pulsation is what the narrator says here, he was stone dead.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: His eye would trouble me no more. If you still
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: think me mad, you will think so no longer. When
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: of the body. So precautions are things you do in
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: order to prevent problems. You take precautions. For example, if
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: you're traveling to a foreign country, you might maybe have
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: certain injections to protect yourself from diseases, or you know,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: take out insurance. These are precautions that you take before
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: you travel somewhere. Right in this case, it's the wise
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: precautions I took for the concealment of the body, to
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: conceal the body, meaning to hide the body. So he's saying,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: you won't think I'm mad when I tell you about
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: the careful way that I hid the body. The night waned,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: meaning the night started to end, and I worked hastily.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: I worked quickly, but in silence. First of all, I
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: dismembered the corpse, meaning he chopped off, He chopped it up.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: He chopped off the head and the arms and legs.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: Then I took up three planks from the flooring of
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: the chamber. So planks are wooden boards. We use planks to,
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: you know, the floor of your bedroom. If you've got
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: a wooden floor hammered down with nails, those are We
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: describe those pieces of wood as planks, like a plank
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: of wood, A long, flat, thin piece of wood is
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: a plank of wood. So he removed He took up
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: three planks from the flooring of the chamber, the chamber
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: being the room and deposited, meaning put in all, meaning
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: all the parts of the body between the scantlings. Scantlings
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: are just pieces of wood that go across the floor,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: and the planks of wood are then laid on top
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: of them. So basically, he's saying, I removed three planks
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: from the floor of the room and put all the
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: bits of the body in there, and then replace the
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye, not
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: even his, so referring again to the old man's eye,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: could have detected anything wrong. Right, There was nothing to
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: wash out, no stain of any kind, so no stain,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: no blood stain. A stain is when, for example, if
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: you spill coffee on your t shirt, you might have
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: a brown stain. If you spill blood, if you're chopping
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: up a man's body, blood might come out and land
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: on your shirt or something, and then you'd have a
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: blood stain on your shirt, which is not going to
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: look very good, is it. But though apparently there was
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: no stain, no blood spot, I'd been too wary, meaning
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: too careful, too cautious for that A tub had caught all.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: So he did it in a bath tub. It's like
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: something out of Breaking Bad. When I had made an
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: end of these labors, meaning when I'd finished the work,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: it was four o'clock in the morning, still dark as midnight,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: as the bell sounded the hour. So this is clang clang,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: clang clang. The bell sounded the hour four o'clock. There
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: came a knocking at a street door, knock, knock, knock.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: I went down to open it with a light heart.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: So he feels lighthearted. Who could this be calling on
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: me at four in the morning? La, la, la, la la, Yes,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: good morning, How can I help you? So he goes
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: down with a light heart. For what had I now
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: to fear? What could he be afraid of? Now everything
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: was perfectly taken care of. There entered three men. So
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: three men entered who introduced themselves with perfect suavity. So,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: if you're suave, this is an old fashioned word, suave
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: is fairly fairly commonly used. But if you're suave, it
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: means you're kind of relaxed and charming, a bit like
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: James Bond. The name's Bond, James Bond. I'll I'll have
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: a vodka Martine. He's shaken, not stirred, very suave. My
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: name is James Bond played by Roger Moore or maybe
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: a Sean Connery. A schwave. I'm extremely schwave. I can't
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: actually share the word, but I am the word. Does
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: that make sense? Hello? So the officers introduce them. Hello,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: we are the police officers from the local police station.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: We were just wondering if we might be able to
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: search the building. We'd have reports of a very sinister
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: sounding shriek. And you know, to be honest, your neighbors
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: have told us that you're extremely strange man, and probably
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: a bit murdery sort of guy who might murder an
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: old man for no particular reason and then chop up
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: his corpse and think that it's all normal. So if
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: you didn't mind, we'd like to search your home. Would
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: that be okay? So they introduced themselves with perfect suavity
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: a scream ah had been heard by a neighbor during
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: the night. Suspicion of foul play. Suspicion meaning people suspected
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: that something had happened. I think that maybe someone has
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: been attacked. Sounded like the old man has been attacked
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: in his room. Foul Play is still a word or
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: phrase that we use today. You read it in the news.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Foul play means more or less murder. So you know
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: when someone is found dead, you know, like actor John
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Stevenson was found dead in his home. Police have investigated
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: it and do not suspect foul play. So foul play
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: in this case means criminal activity like murder. Suspicion of
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: foul play had been aroused. So people, did you hear
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: that it sounds like he's been attacked. I think we
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: better call the police. Information had been lodged at the
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: police office. Quite formal language. Again, information has been given
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: formally given to the police, a report have been made
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: and they the officers had been deputed, so they've basically
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: been sent given the authority to come and search the premises.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: So deputed again is a very specific words that you
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: never really heard youse before. But you imagine it's like
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: a deputy. You know, you've got the sheriff of the
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: police and then the deputies. Deputies would be people who
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: have given authority by the the person in charge. So
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: they've basically been given they've been delegated the job of
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: coming to search the premises. This is a word that
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: we still use a lot today, meaning the building so
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: the premises is always the building. Basically, I smiled, for
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: what had I to fear? I bade the gentleman welcome. Ay,
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: I bid you welcome. Of course you can come in.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: So this is old fashioned language. To bid someone welcome,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: bid someone farewell. Bade is the past form. It just
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: means to say, like a formal welcome or a formal goodbye,
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: bid someone welcome, bid someone good night, bid someone goodbye.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: But we don't really use it anymore. The shriek I said,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: was my own in a dream. So he said that
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: he screamed in a dream. The old man I mentioned
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: was absent in the country, so he was away in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: the countryside. I took my visitors all over the house.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: I bade them search, meaning offered them basically said they
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: could search and search. Well, please go ahead and search.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: I led them. So he's the leader, he's leading them.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: So I led them at length to his chamber. Eventually
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: I took them to his room. I showed them his treasures. Look,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: he's all his gold. It's perfectly secure, it's undisturbed, no
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: one's tried to steal it. In the enthusiasm of my confidence,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: I brought chairs into the room there. Let me get
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: some chairs, let's have a sit down, and desired them
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: here to rest from their fatigues. You must be very tired.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: Let me allow you to sit down. Well, I'll just
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: hold on, I'll get some chairs. Meanwhile, the police are
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: probably going, what do you think. He's very suspicious, isn't he?
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: Don't you think? Hmm? Let's just wait a while and
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: talk to him and see what he's got to say.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: Police officers say, yes, of course, sit down, sit down,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Why why not? Let's sit here in the old man's
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: room while I myself in the wild audacity of my
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: perfect triumph. So he's feeling so audacious, so confident and
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: strident right in his in the wild audacity of his
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: perfect triumph, audacity, bravery, confidence, maybe over confidence of his
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: perfect triumph. He's feeling so overconfident. After his victory, he
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: placed his own seat upon the very spot beneath which
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: reposed the corpse of the victim. So he put the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: chair right on the spot where underneath it was where
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: the body was reposed or was resting. Okay, the officers
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: were satisfied. Apparently my manner had convinced them. The officers, well, okay,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: there seems to be nothing out of the ordinary here.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks very much for your help. And the man the
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: narrator said, I was singularly at ease, singularly meaning in
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: a unique way, so he felt very, very comfortable and confident. Well, yes,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: of course, if there's anything else I can do to help,
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: then don't hesitate to ask. But I have no idea
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: what's been going on. I was singularly at ease, so
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: particularly comfortable feeling. They sat and while I answered cheerily,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: they chatted a familiar thing, so they started making small talk. So, oh,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: the weather's been a bit cold recently, hasn't it. You're
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: able to keep warm in this house, and tell you
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: what our fireplace? So we need to get the chimney
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: cleaned as a bit of a nightmare. Do you know
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: any good chimney? Sweet? You know? But ear long meaning
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: after a long time. I felt myself getting pale and
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: wished them gone. So as the officers were talking, the
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: narrator starts to feel He starts to feel pale in
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: his face and he wants them to go. My head ached.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: He starts to get a headache, and I fancied a
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: ringing in my ears. There's that word fancied again in
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: the old fashioned sense, meaning he thought that he had
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: a ringing in his ears, a ringing in his ears,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: like a ringing sound. But still they sat and chatted.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: The ringing became more distinct. It continued and became more distinct.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: So he starts talking to try and get rid of
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: this ringing in his ears. Oh, yes, the weather's been awfully,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: awfully cold recently. But you know, if you wrap up warm,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: it's not so bad, you know. He tried to get
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: rid of the feeling by talking more, but it continued
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: and gained definitiveness, meaning gained clarity. So the ringing gets
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: louder and clearer, until at length I found that the
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: noise was not within my ears. So he suddenly believes
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: that the noise that he can hear is actually coming
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: from outside. It's not just in his ears. He's convinced
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: that there's a ringing sound in the room, no doubt.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: I now grew very pale, meaning very like the color
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: had gone out of his skin. But I talked more
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: fluently and with a heightened voice. So his voice is
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: getting higher, and he says, he's talking more fluently, but
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: clearly the guy is starting to ramble in probably quite
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: a disturbed way. Yes, well, certainly, you know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: you know, what would it be like? I don't know.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: He's starting to sound very manic and disturbed. Yet the
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: sound increased, and what could I do? It was a low, dull,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: quick sound, much such as a sound as a watch
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: makes when enveloped in cotton. There again is that sound
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: that he's this repeated, repetitive sound. First it's the sound
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: of the old man's heart, and then he refers back
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: to the sound of the beatles in the wall. And
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: now this disturbing noise that he can hear is like
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: this repeating sound. I gasped for breath. So he's like that,
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: And yet the officers heard it. Not I talked more quickly,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: more vehemently, with more passion, right, but the noise steadily increased.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: I arose, So he stood up and argued about trifles.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: So he starts arguing about trivial things in a high
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: key and with violent gesticulations. So he's kind of he's
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: walking around and gesticulating with his hands, and his voice
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: is very high and loud, and he's arguing about very
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: unimportant things. But the noise steadily increased. Why would they
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: not be gone? I paced the floor, so he walked.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: If you pace, it means you walk fast. So I
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: paced the floor to and fro. So he's walking up
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: and down with heavy strides, stepping heavily. A stride is
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: like a long step. So he's like walking up and
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: down in the room, ranting and raving and gesticulating because
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: he's so bothered by this noise, as if excited to
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: fury by the observations of the men. So as these
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: men are sitting back looking at him, he's getting more
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: and more furious. But the noise steadily increased. Oh god,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: what could I do? Meaning that the foam starts coming
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: out of his mouth. You know, normally in your mouth
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: you have saliva, but if you get very agitated or furious,
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: it might start to form foam, which is like little bubbles,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: white bubbles that appear in the sides of his mouth.
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: So he's foaming at the mouth. I raved, meaning I
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: spoke in a very very sort of animated and agitated way.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: Rah rah rahrah, I raved, I swore. When he starts
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: using rude language. I swung the chair upon which I'd
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: been sitting. So he picked up the chair and starts
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: swinging it around and grated it upon the board. So
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: he's dragging it along the floorboards and swinging it in
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: the air. But the noise arose overall and continually increased.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: This noise get louder and louder and louder, and still
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: the men chatted pleasantly and smiled, So as he's getting
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: more and more agitated, the men are still very pleasant
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: and chatting and smiling, and he starts to believe that
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: they are tricking him, that they know what's going on,
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: and that they're pretending to be normal. And we still
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: don't even know. Actually, if the narrator is doing these things,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: maybe he's just sitting in the chair quite normally talking
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: about whatever. But in his mind, he's so he's so
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: insane that his perception is that he's ranting and raving
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: and it's going to be incredibly obvious to these men
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: what's going on, and that he's so disturbed that it
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: must be obvious. But maybe in reality he's just sitting there.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't know. Was it possible that they
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: heard not. I mean, was it possible that they didn't
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: hear the sound? Almighty God, No, no, they heard. They
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: suspected they knew. So he's so paranoid. Now he's certain
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: that they know what's going on, that they can hear
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: the sound. They were making a mockery of my horror,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: meaning they were mocking him. They were making a joke
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: out of it by pretending not to notice. This, I thought,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: and this I think. But anything was better than this agony.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: So agony is like very acute pain. Anything was more
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: tolerable than this derision. So derision is like where people
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: are making fun of you. And he felt like the
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: two police officers were deriding him, making fun of him
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: by sitting there pretending that everything was normal. Meanwhile, he's
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: completely going out of his mind with this sound. Anything
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: was more tolerable than this. Tolerable meaning possible to tolerate.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer. I mean,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't stand it, couldn't bear it, those hypocritical smiles.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: They're smiling, but they they know the truth, they know
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: that something's going on, but they're still smiling. So he
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: sees them as hypocritical I felt that I must scream
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: or die. And now again hark, meaning listen louder, louder louder.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: So the this sound that he can hear is getting louder. Villains,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: I shrieked. Villains are like bad guys. Villains Dissemble me
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: dissemble no more, dissemble meaning to hide your true feelings.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: Dissemble no more. I admit the deed, meaning I admit it,
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: I admit doing it, doing the deed, doing the action.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: Tear up the planks right, meaning rip up the planks
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: or remove the floorboards. Here here, it is the beating
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: of his hiddeous heart hideous meaning horrible, disgusting. So he
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: gets more and more crazy, and he's convinced that the
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: sound that you can hear is the beating of the
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: old man's heart. So what is this sound? It's like
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: it drives him mad. The guilt that he feels eventually
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: reveals the truth, and he gives himself away and is
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: convinced that they understand that they know they can see
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: the truth. And finally he can't take it anymore, and
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: he basically says, okay, pull up the floorboards. Look here
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: I did it. Look here's the body, and you can
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: you hear the sound. It's the beating of his heart.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, there's no doubt at this point that the
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: guy is completely insane. So there you go. That's my
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: explanation of the words that are in the story. Let
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: me go back now, though, to just some of those
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: comments about what this story actually means, some of the themes
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: of the story. Okay, so first, that's what we have, the
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: idea of madness. So the man spends a lot of
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: time trying to convince us that he's not mad, as
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: if this is in question. His main arguments for this
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: are that he knew exactly what he was doing when
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: he planned this murder, and the fact that he felt
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: his senses were incredibly sensitive. So these are reasons for
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: him not being mad. However, his actions show that he
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: is clearly insane. Firstly his justification for the murder the eye,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: which is not really a rational reason for killing someone,
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: and then the manner in which he shows the police
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: that he is guilty hearing something that nobody else can hear.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: It's about insanity and the fact that truly mad people
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: don't know they are mad. That true insanity is believing
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: your rational and sane, but having no connection to the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: real world in which you are behaving in a very
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: mad way, which is quite a disturbing thing that you
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: might be completely insane but not even know it, not
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: even be aware of it. Guilt is a theme. The
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: sound of the beating heart is often interpreted as a
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: symbol of the narrator's guilty conscience. Even though the old
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: man is dead, the narrator cannot escape the psychological weight
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: of his crime. The heartbeat becomes a manifestation of his
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: inner torment, growing louder until it drives him to confess.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: And then, as I said before, the unreliable narrator. The
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: story is told in the first person, and the narrator's
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: account is full of contradictions. His insistence on his sanity
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: despite his obvious madness highlights Poe's fascination with unreliable narrators
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: who mislead or confuse readers about what is real, which
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: leads us to another theme of this story, which is
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: the nature of reality. By blurring the lines between the
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: external world and the narrator's internal experiences, Poe questions what
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: can truly be known as real? Is the heart beat
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: real or is it a hallucination? The story plays with
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: the tension between perception and reality. The Telltale Heart reflects
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe's broader interest in psychological horror, delving into
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: the darker corners of the human mind where guilt, fear,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: and madness converge. Now I've mentioned this before, but here's
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: a theory. Several times he mentions the sound of a low,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: muffled beating, like a clock muffled by cotton, and once
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: he mentions listening to the sound of death Watch beetles
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: in the wall. Could the sound of the beatles have
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: driven him insane? And that's the sound of the beatles
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: meaning the insects, not the band. I don't think he's
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: been listening to Like Abbey Road over and over again
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: until he's gone completely round the bend? Right anyway, That's
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: the end of this episode of Learn English with a
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: short story, The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. How
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: are you doing, listeners? Are you all right? I hope
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: you haven't been driven completely round the bend by this episode.
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed it and that it's been interesting
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: to explore this classic scary short story. What did you think?
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: What did you think? Of it. Leave your comments in
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: the comments section as usual. What could we have as
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: our code word? You can leave a hashtag what er?
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know? What should we have? Heart? Heart. Let's
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: say the word heart could be the word that you
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: can try to include in your comments, something like, you know,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: thanks for explaining the vocabulary, it'll really help me learn
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: it all by heart. Something like that. Or I didn't
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: have the heart to you know, read scary stories like
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: this before, but thank you very much for introducing us
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: to one in this episode. I don't know, something like that.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I hope you're okay and you haven't become
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: a skeleton with headphones on. I hope you enjoyed this story.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: I'll speak to you again in the next episode, but
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: for now, it's just time to say goodbye, bye bye.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: Boe boo boo.