The Tell-Tale Heart-Confessions Of A Guilty Mad Man

Confessions of a Guilty Mad Man The motive that made guilt manifest within. A lesson of guilt taught with fear, and the outcomes of how guilt can make a man go mad and confess. This is what Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” teaches us. Within the beginning of the story the narrator thinks very highly of himself telling the reader that he was very careful with getting away with murder. “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded with what caution-with what foresight-with what-dissimulation I went to work! “ (Poe 692). That is until he starts explaining his motivation towards why he killed the old man, but as the narrator explains he does not know why he killed the old man that is until he speaks of the old man’s evil eye. “I think it was his eye!-yes, it was this!” (Poe, 691). The eye of the old man showed the narrators true intentions a mirror into his own mind showing him his true self. Unable to take it the narrator kills the man and in the aftermath guilt slowly manifests within him slowly growing with each passing day. Poe didn’t like to teach lessons within his stories but instead he wanted to strike fear into his readers. A guilty conscience

As he starts to hear the beating of a heart that no one else can hear but only him. “I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart.”(Poe, 693). But only the narrator can hear this beating, perhaps it was an echo from the dark deed he has committed, or it was from his own heartbeat! Poe liked to have a feel of the supernatural within his stories in this case the narrator described his heightened sense that he is able to hear a heartbeat, “the disease had sharpened my senses- not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.” (Poe 691). Although it may seem as super natural is actually not. One of the many stages of guilt the acute senses of one’s self. The narrator is in fact feeling the pressure of his guilt soaked