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Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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“Everyone/Thinks that we’re perfect/Please don’t let them see through the curtains.” These may just be song lyrics from Melanie Martinez’s song “Dollhouse”, but it speaks of a conglomeration of ideas. It represents the fact that many people have internal conflict, and that not all people with minds that are socially or medically considered “functioning” can act in a normal way. The narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart”, a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, is a suitable example of one of those people. In the short story, the narrator has a disease that brings him to fear the old man- his neighbor- to the point that he feels the only solution is to murder him. He attempts to convince both himself and the reader that he is not mad, as he classifies …show more content…

Throughout this battle, he still believes he has exceptionally sharp senses and a strong mind, and even believes that he can kill the old man without being caught. The narrator ends up killing him, as he fears the old man’s “Evil Eye”, a cataract-ridden eyeball of an old man, which the narrator believes to have malicious intentions and abilities. The police then arrive, where the narrator has a calm demeanor, and convinces the police he did nothing wrong. However, in the end, his heart begins to palpitate from guilt, and he believes this to be the beating of the old man’s heart, even though the old man is dead. This drives him, if possible, to further insanity, and causes him to confess his terrible deeds to the police. These events show that a big theme in this short story is that “the hardest battle is the one inside your mind”, and symbols such as the “Evil Eye”, the narrator’s disease, and the narrator’s beating heart help support …show more content…

On page 3, the text states “The officers were satisfied. My MANNER had convinced them. I was singularly at ease… But ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone.” This change of extreme calm and not minding the officers to becoming pale and wishing them gone shows how guilt is finally getting to him. Many signs of guilt are pacing, shivering/shaking, getting frustrated, wanting to be alone, losing air, and becoming pale/disoriented. Here, two of those six signs are shown. “Everybody’s Fool” by Evanescence and “Sippy Cup” by Melanie Martinez both relate to this situation, with the lyrics being: “Without the mask /where will you hide?/ Can't find yourself/ lost in your lie./I know the truth now/ I know who you are” and “Kids are still depressed when you dress them up/ Syrup is still syrup in a sippy cup”. Both sets of lyrics show that even though one can try to hide what they are feeling or pretending to be something/someone else, their true self and feelings will eventually show, just like the narrator’s guilt finally began to show and he couldn’t pretend to be calm and innocent anymore. Anyway, more of those six signs appear, with the text on page 3 stating “I gasped for breath-- and yet the officers heard it not”, “Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observation of the men”, and “Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore!” These show

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“ 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.

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The man knows this and feels bad for not liking the man’s eye, but believes his reason makes it okay. “It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.” Poe. The beating of the heart began to make him angry.

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In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the author uses diction, syntax, and symbolism to develop the narrator’s psychotic character. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator describes a murder that he committed. The narrator says he wants to kill the old man because of his “evil eye”: “for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (1). But, the old man’s “eye” could really represent the mindset or soul of the narrator. And, his reason for killing the old man may not be his eye, but really the narrator could be insane and due to that he has urges to kill the old man.

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The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.

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The directive and apathetic personality of the protagonist respectively from “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also exposed through their style of narration. The man from the “Tell-Tale Heart” imposes a one-way dialogue with the reader in which he questions the reader and heavily suggests the answers. When he hears the old man’s heart beating for the first time, he says: “And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?“ (70). Through this technique, the narrator attempts to convince the reader of his sanity and the grandeur of his accomplishments, preventing the reader from thinking and developing his own arguments: he is forced to agree with the narrator’s point of view.

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Despite sympathizing and relating to the old man’s fear, the narrator still finds amusement in haunting the old man at the dead of night. This attests that the narrator cannot distinguish right from wrong because he does not grasp that what he is doing to the old man is immoral. He is invoking terror for the benefit of his own deranged addiction to the daunting eyeball. Furthermore, the narrator proves once again that he cannot tell right from wrong when he not only takes the old man’s life, but also goes on to describe how immensely prideful he is in how swiftly he did so. Committing an act of murder is no generous deed, yet the narrator consequentially flatters himself for killing and discarding the old man in a supremely clean manner.

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Oh, God. What can I do about this? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair

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In addition, the narrator's use of symbols added to the story a unique flavor, as this helped him to represent his ideas metaphorically and indirectly, which added depth to the story. For example, the eagle eye of the older man symbolizes the evil power of the narrator because it is seen as a supernatural force that serves as a reminder to the narrator of the things that cause him anxiety and of skills and aptitudes that are not based on logical solid foundations. Also, in the last scene, the narrator draws a vivid picture of his remorse and confirms his mental imbalance by using the words “the sound of the heartbeat under the floorboards. That madness makes him unable to differentiate between the reality in which he lives and his distorted perceptions, which leads the reader to wonder what is expected and what is not natural and whether the narrator was hearing the older man’s heartbeat after killing

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The narrator says, “my anger increased as it looked straight at me. I could not see the old man’s face. Only that eye, that hard blue eye, and the blood in my body became like ice.” He says he could hear the old man’s heart beat, like the ticking of a clock as he sat up in terror.

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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.

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Literary Essay “‘Cuz sometimes to stay alive you gotta kill your mind.” These descriptive lyrics from the song Migraine, written by the modern day band Twenty Øne Pilots, tells that the thoughts in one’s mind can make it hard to stay alive, or function as one should. According to the song, in order to keep from emotional harm, one must fight the negative thoughts and emotions. A situation like the one illustrated in the lyrics from Migraine is displayed through a not so modern character. This character is the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

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The narrator is obsessed with the old man’s eye, perceiving it as evil and a threat to his well-being. The narrator's decision to kill the old man in order to permanently remove the eye, reveals his severe paranoia and the extent he is willing to go to protect himself from perceived danger. This shows that the unknown narrator has a paranoid personality disorder (PPD) because of the distrust and suspicion he has over the old man's eye, which compelled him to kill the innocent

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Conflict arises when the narrator fixates his madness on the old man's eye “I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of

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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.

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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.

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