Guilt In The Tell Tale Heart

The feeling of guilt, is like the pressure of Earth resting on the Titan Atlas’s back. The pain and suffering is unbearable as well as wanting to let go of the feeling. Two pieces of literature that show the thematic topic of guilt are in the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe,which is about the narrator who murders an old man living in his residence. When the police came to inspect the narrator’s house due to someone reporting a scream, he tried to confidently to say that nothing was wrong and there was no trouble. Alas, the narrator’s guilty conscious got the best of him as he imagined the the old man’s heartbeat haunting him, leading to him insanely revealing his killing to the police. The poem, “I Can Stand Him No Longer”

We also learn that from how similarly how insane one’s mind can get through guilt we also see how differently both the thematic topic of guilt, were guilt usually reveals its secrets can be represented. Through, “The Tell Tale Heart” We see the narrator describe his conditions as stable and refuses to believe in his problems. As it states in Poe’s story, “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.” To put simply, the main character through using hyperbole to show that his senses have increased sharply. we see that through denial of his guilt we see that his refusal to accept his problems result him into ultimately revealing his plans. While one story adresses the thematic topic of guilt, in “I Can Stand Him No Longer” Poe Writes, “How could it be that they did not know,How the fires of hate made me glow?Through my guilt, my secret would not remain concealed,A heavy conscience will always make what’s hidden revealed.”Through rhyme scheme, it differs from the first one showing that the narrator knew himself to be mad but rather revealed himself thinking that people already knew. Resulting in him exposing himself. Through different ways of revealing secrets fueled by guilt, we see how much of a devastating impact it can have on you and the people around