Edgar Allan Poe Guilt

Throughout his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe wrote stories conveying the common themes of death, solitude,self-consciousness, and lost love. Much of his writing was influenced by the hardships he encountered growing up. By the age of three both of his parents, who were professional actors, passed away. Poe was sent to John and Frances Allan and attended the University of Virginia; however, John refused to pay the debt Poe accumulated from gambling resulting in Poe leaving the university. Frances Allan, Poe’s foster mother, died causing his relationship with John to deteriorate. Additionally, Poe lost his wife, Virginia, to tuberculosis. Edgar Allan Poe is known for his unique writing that included horror, mystery, and darkness. In the short story

In his writing, he describes the eye of the old man saying “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 2). Poe says the eye of the old man makes him feel cold and fearful, and it is the ultimate force that induces him to take his vicious actions. By comparing the eye to a vulture, he symbolizes death and creates a sense of foreshadowing. Additionally, Poe uses the heart to symbolize the narrator’s guilt and conscience as he says “I foamed - I raved - I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose overall and continually increased. It grew louder - louder - louder!” Although the narrator already killed the old man, he still hears the heartbeat because the consequences of guilt are inevitable. This is depicted when the narrator exclaims “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! - hear, here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe 8). Despite meticulously planning and executing the murder, covering all evidence of the crime, and convincing the police of his innocence, the narrator cannot overcome his guilty conscience for the crime he committed. Through the use of imagery and symbolism, Edgar Allan Poe displays the inexorable consequences a guilty

The darkness in “The Tell-Tale Heart'' is ubiquitous; moreover, much of Poe’s dark writing was derived from his morbid childhood. In an article on psychoanalytic criticism, the author Sarah Moll writes “Childhood experiences are extremely influential and, to a large degree, shape a person’s psyche, according to Freud” (Moll). Growing up, Poe faced many hardships from the death of his parents to the death of his wife. As a result, he experienced solitude and isolation which impacted his expression of superego in his writing. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe shows the impact of his dark childhood as he writes about killing an old man to rid himself of the agony the man’s eye brings him. The reader sees the deeper meaning as Poe connects the self-conflicted narrator to his own life. As the narrator describes the man’s nervousness, he says “Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or grief - oh, no! - it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well” (Poe 4). Poe relates himself to the noise the old man makes that is associated with death and agony. Guilt is often associated with darkness and has a negative connotation; Poe’s message that a guilty conscience will take control is directly related to the darkness described throughout the