The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

772 Words4 Pages
In life, everyone has craving that they feel they must relinquish, almost like a motive. In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the author, Edgar Allen Poe describes this man, who narrates the story, who covets a need to keep the old man’s eye shut forever. This eye makes the narrator feel uneasy because the eye has a cataract but the narrator is distressed by this. The narrator come up with a strategy to kill the old man that way the eye is secured for good. For seven nights, the narrator would artfully sneak into the old man’s bedroom with a lantern covered by a cloth and then open the cloth just enough onto the old man’s eyelid to see if the eye was open. On the eighth night, the narrator stealthily sneaks in to find that the old man’s eye is wide open. The eye infuriates him just enough to commit the heinous crime. Edgar Allen Poe uses description, 1st person narrator, and tone to develop character motivation. First, Poe uses description to manifest character motivation. The motivation the character needs to kill the old man is to peer into the old man’s eye unanticipated that way he could have the unerring inducement to commit the act. “One of his eye resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye, with film over it.” The old man’s “vulture eye” patronizes the narrator because he finds the eye unbearable. The use of the word “vulture” describes to the reader just how much the narrator excrates the eye. Another example of description is,”And every morning, when the day