ipl-logo

Analyzing Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

628 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Edgar allan poe psychological disorders

The Heart That tales all Edgar Allen Poe has created numerous emotion jerking poems. "The Tell-Tale Heart" was one of his works that plays on mental illness. This poem has a thick plot line, he is trying to defend his sanity, but he tells us that he killed a man. Poe tells us he did not kill the man in rage, or for riches, but because he feared the mans blue eyes. This line speaks a lot of the author, and of the fear he had. If you fear someone so much over the color of your eyes, your sanity can be put into question. He observed the man for a week. He watched the man as he slept, and in the morning acted as nothing had happened. After the 7th night he decided that it was time to kill the old man. The plot is beginning to thicken as it …show more content…

First of all he stalked this old man for a week, and watched him as he slept. Second he kills the old man because he believes that the mans heart beating will wake up the neighbors. Someone 's heart can not beat so loud that the neighbors can hear it. His sanity wasn 't in tack because to believe that someone in another house can hear someone 's heart beat is insane. Third killing the old man due to his heart beating loudly is a poor excuse to kill someone. To kill someone something in your head has to be messed up for you to be able to go to that extreme. Lastly Poe had to be insane because he cut the mans body up, and placed him underneath the floor boards of the mans bedroom. To kill someone takes a lot of craziness, but to cut someone 's body up into pieces is incredibly insane, and unhuman. "The Heart That Tales All ' really speaks volume 's in this poem. The old mans heart beating was key to this poem. The beating heart lead Poe farther down the path of mental illness, and deterioration. The old mans heart is what led Poe to his ultimate demise of killing the old man, and confessing to the sick and unhuman crime. One could say that Poe was in his own little world of paranoia, and I believe that in this poem Poe was very sick. He was clinically insane, unstable, and extremely paranoid of his surroundings around him. "The Tell-Tale Heart" told the true story of mental illness, and how it

Show More
Related
728 Words | 3 Pages

“ The Tell-Tale Heart” Interpretive Essay Is the complex character created by Edgar Allan Poe a calculated killer or a delusional madman. In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character has a mental condition which causes him to kill a neighbor. He believes that his neighbor has a “vulture eye” which is the reason why he killed him. Night after night, he watches the man and plans how to kill him. Then one night, he puts his plan into action.

Read More
803 Words | 4 Pages

In the stories The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, both narrators realize their acts were wrong, but they did them anyway by rationalizing that they were driven by circumstance. The Tell-Tale Heart is about a mad man who truly believes he is not crazy by telling us the whole story. He deeply loves his roomate but his blind eye became a nusiance to him and he couldn’t stand it no more and he had to do something about it. He ended up killing him so perfectly no one whould know, but the guilt ate him up and he amited he had done the deed to the police. Similarly, The Black Cat is about another insane man who drowns his sorrows with achocl and is so confident with himeself.

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

He describes himself as not being a “madman” but yet being able to “hear things in all heaven and earth.” The use of imagery shows the readers over and over again the reasons for the man murdering his victim. The “pale blue eye” is described in a way that even the audience wants to rid of it. This heightens the sense of insanity as even the readers can relate to the demented man.

Read More
1159 Words | 5 Pages

Yet, the narrator did not seem completely insane whatsoever, apart from having abnormal emotions he did not behave differently when it comes to intellectuality. " the disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. " Here he announces his intention to convince his audience that he is indeed perfectly sane. So, when describing how he planned and carried out the murder, his actions seemed quite logical.

Read More
879 Words | 4 Pages

Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart “The Tell-Tale Heart” short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator which is the murder in the story is trying to convince the audience that he is not insane. He has been ill, but insists that his illness has made his mind, feeling, and senses even stronger. The narrator wants to kill the old man that he lives with only because he finds that his eye is evil and compares his eye to a vulture. “And every morning I went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice I asked him how he had slept. He could not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.”

Read More
401 Words | 2 Pages

In the, Tell-tale Heart, Poe’s central ideas of madness and obsession are supported by his use of point-of-view, repetition, and punctuation. Poe’s use of a first- person point of view helps the readers understand the central idea of madness. The narrator states, “How then, am I mad? ... observe how healthily-how calmly I can tell you the whole story”. By allowing the readers into the narrators mind, they can clearly notice that the narrator is insane and unstable.

Read More
290 Words | 2 Pages

Story’s theme The short stories of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is nonetheless a heartfelt and, at times, unclear investigation of a man's paranoia. Human being character is normally an insubstantial sense of balance of brightness and dim or good and vice. For the most part of the time uncertain balance is sustained; however, when there is a shift, for whatever the reason, the dark or perverse side surfaces. How and why this dark side emerges differs from person to person.

Read More
945 Words | 4 Pages

“Insanity: n. mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior” (Hill). This definition describes the narrator, a sweet yet deadly man, of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe seamlessly. (Appositive) A few prominent characteristics demonstrate the narrator’s insanity, and those include his motives, his actions, and his thoughts.

Read More
434 Words | 2 Pages

The narrator proclaims that there is no possible way that he could be a madman, because he is too calm and wise to be insane. In the end of the story however, his own guilty heart made him admit to killing the old man. The narrator could take it no longer and

Read More
558 Words | 3 Pages

The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the story, three major details of the narrator’s psyche are confirmed. First, we learned of the narrator’s deceitfulness. Every morning he lies to the old man with the least bit of guilt. The next continues to prove the madness as the narrator feels utter joy from the terror of another. Lastly, the narrator fabricates that the old man is simply not home to assure the officers.

Read More
780 Words | 4 Pages

Firstly, he killed the old man because of his eye. Additionally , he claimed that he kept hearing the heartbeat when the old man was dead. In closing, he had no control over himself. The difference between a sane person and an insane person is how they think and act. The narrator is obviously insane since he acted easy and normal in situations that are expected to be handled differently, like the time the policemen came to question him about the noises coming out of the house.

Read More
678 Words | 3 Pages

Through the entire story, Poe had it so the reader always knew something was going to happen, but constantly question when and what. “The Tell Tale Heart” continually makes the reader think and sparks a certain interest. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, there are multiple instances of suspense. One part with a lot is when the narrator is going to actually kill the

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator 's sole reason for such murder is purely in his disturbed mind, as he develops an obsession with the old man 's eye and the plot unfolds from here where his insanity augments with the events of the story. Due to Poe’s illustrative language, various evidence can be presented to confirm the state of mind of the narrator, including, his obsession with the old man’s eye, his precision in committing the impeccable crime and finally the sound of the man’s beating heart solely inside his head. Perhaps it all started with the narrator’s obsession with the man’s “vulture eye” since he believes the eye of being evil, proving the insanity he is gravely trying to deny “I think it was

Read More
821 Words | 4 Pages

The narrator of “The Tell-tale Heart” is a madman who does not believe he is insane but continues to show otherwise during the telling of how he kills the old man to police officers. After a week of planning the murder, he still did not find satisfactory because he could still hear the beating of the old man’s heart. Also, if one is not a madman then why would one commit such a crime just because of an eye. While the narrator explains the story of how and why he commits murder, one can conclude that some details are unrealistic throughout his story. Which leads him to come off as a psychopath because of the details and the reason behind killing the old man.

Read More

More about Analyzing Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

Related Topics

Open Document