Select the correct answer from each drop-down menu. Read this excerpt from "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Then fill in the blanks in the paragraph that follows.
TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened
my senses — not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the
earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole
story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none.
Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. 1
think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my
blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the
eye forever.
In these opening lines, the reader is presented with a narrator who wants to kill "the old man" because of his eye. The author uses
the lines to present a
conflict. Based on this excerpt, this stage of the plot is most likely to occur in