“ 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.
In this short story “ The Tell- Tale Heart” author Edgar Allan Poe presents a character who was extremely nervous and insane that tries to kill an old man because of his eye. This character, the young man, tries to convince the reader that he is not mad by telling us what happened in his own perspective. In the story the young man live in the same house with the old man. He tells us his close relationship with him and how much he loved him.
Throughout history, we have came across many authors with different writing styles, word choice,or unique ways of interpretations. Edgar Allen Poe is one author who stands out to me the most. He has a unique and dark way of writing his stories and it appeals to the readers emotion and drama. He has a recurring theme of death and lost love, and in “The Tell-Tale Heart” Poe writes about murder, insanity, obsession and guilt. His use of symbolism and point of view is another reason what makes Poe one of the greatest.
While reading “The Tell-Tale Heart” written by Edgar Allen Poe, I could not help but to notice the mental conflict the narrator portrayed. Through obvious statements from the narrator and my own insinuations, I believe it is safe to conclude that the narrator’s claim to sanity was unreliable and compromised due to his/her mental state. The narrator’s attempt to rationalize his rational behavior in the end caused him to be looked at as a madman, we see this by how “wisely” he executed and handled the old man’s body after killing him, and how his “sharpened senses” as he described early in the poem, ultimately was the reason why he confessed to his crime. The story begins with how the narrator professes, “I loved the old man” and “He never wronged me”, then reveals how he was obsessed with the old man’s eye; “The eye of
Imagine waking in the middle of the night and seeing a pair of eyes glaring at you as you lay in bed. In the story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe, the murderer stares at his victim while he is sleeping for seven nights in a row before he commits the murder. The narrator justifies his actions by claiming that the old man's eye was evil. It is also perceived that the narrator has a disease or mental illness. On the day of the murder, the madman went into the old man's room and threw his bed over him.
The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” explains that he is dreadfully nervous, not mad. The narrator has a lot of love for the old man, however, the narrator explains how he could not stand the sight of the old man’s pale blue eye with film over it which looks like a vulture’s eye. The narrator feels that he can rationalize his insanity, and believes that he cannot be mad or crazy because he is being too cautious in plotting the murder of the old man. The narrator spends seven nights slipping into the old man’s room at midnight where he shines a light onto the face of the old man, due to his eye being closed and not being able to see the hazy eye, the narrator wants to the rid the man of the eye rather than kill him.
"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity" "There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell." -Edgar Allan Poe A man whose life is still veiled in mystery even 150 years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe, the father of horror and gothic writing, is a man that truly understands the meaning of tragedy and madness. Poe lived a life of continuous misfortunes, and in his writings he expresses a darker view on humanity, one example would be in his short story "The Tell-Tale Heart", a story about a man that desperately tries to convince the reader that he is a sane man, despite the egregious story he proceeds to tell; he goes on by walking you through the time he killed an old, innocent man.
The Style of Poe Analysis In “The Tell-tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the demented, arrogant and dark tones reflect the man’s guilt and insanity that eventually leds him to admit to the crime he committed. Poe’s diction heightens the arrogant tones which is seen as the man plans the murder and carries it out in a careful, organized way. He goes “boldly” into the chamber, “cunningly” sticks his head in the doorway and feels “the extent of his own power”. Poe’s use of diction shows how cocky the man actually is.
Imagine looking at everything in the perspective of a killer. Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” a short story that takes place in the late 1800s, puts you in the shoes of a killer. An unnamed person, the narrator, can hear things in hell, heaven, and earth. A caretaker of an old man with a film over his eye, the narrator acts sweet by day, and suspicious by night. Felt by the narrator, is a desire to kill, because he believes the eye is evil.
Human nature is the feelings, attributes, and behavioral traits that all humans share. Many works of fiction use multiple ways to convey messages that readers can relate to, to help them have an extensive understanding of the story. Since human nature is found all throughout society, authors incorporate actions that the characters take, which teaches people to think before they act. Different fictional books often reveal elements of human nature through a conflict between the characters during a certain event in a story. In “The Possibility of Evil, the main character, Miss Strangeworth, gave people her opinions on different topics by writing mean letters to the townspeople because she thought “there was so much evil in people”, eventually
To summarize the story "The Tell Tale Heart", I would say that overall it is of a man that was initially crazy and blew over on his master and ended up telling on himself due to guiltiness and pressure. At the beginning of this story a butler talks about the things he hates of his master and that he had been planning to kill him for 7 days. He says that the mans eye and heartbeat bothers him. Every day he would peek through the old mans door while he slept until one day the old man felt that he was there and the butler shinned a light on the mans eye and decides he couldn't take no more of looking at it because it had bothered him so much.
Aside from a common theoretical basis, there is a psychological intensity that is characteristic of Poe’s writings, especially the tales of horror that comprise his best and best known works. These stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” are often told by a first-person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the workings of a character’s psyche. … The narrator used repetition to build suspense. The narrator is disturbed by the cataract in the old man’s eye and sneaks into his room to kill him.
In literature many works follow the plot diagram format. This includes, the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution. We as readers learn this in the beginning of our education and follow it in the stories we write. The quote by T. Melos, "Every work of literature leads up to one great moment of insight, one instant in which the truth stands revealed" shows that every piece of literature has a climax, or the turning point of a story. For many readers the climax is the most interesting part of the story.
While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.
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.
