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The Tell-Tale Heart Analytical Essay

684 Words3 Pages

The comment the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe makes about the theme of fear and desperation is that it can literally drive us insane. Poe uses an unreliable narrator to create suspense in describing the killing of an old man. Throughout the story, the narrator insists that he is not mad and tries to convince the reader of his sanity. The narrator first mentions that he does not know what led him to decide to kill the old man as he “loved the old man”, but comes to realize that it must have been his blind eye, “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was a snare! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe). The narrator becomes so obsessed with the old man’s blind eye that he decides to “rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe) by taking …show more content…

He is extremely proud of his deed and how he dismembered the corpse leaving no stains of any kind: “A tub had caught all—ha! ha!” (Poe). The delight he takes in dismembering the body and the laughter indicate abnormal behavior. Around 4 am, police officers, called in by a neighbor who heard the old man shriek, showed up on the madman’s doorstep. After the narrator manages to convince the officers that everything is in order, he becomes pale and starts to hallucinate, hearing a sound that he interprets as the old man’s heartbeat. The feeling of guilt caused him to have a mental breakdown screaming, ““Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! — here, here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”” (Poe), confessing the murder. In conclusion, the fear and desperation resulting from the narrator’s obsession with the old man’s blind eye drove the narrator (him) into madness. At the end of the story, the narrator is unmasked as unreliable when he hears a sound which he interprets as the dead man’s

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