The Tell-Tale Heart Insane

Was it the chicken or the egg which came first? One cannot know for certain. In the story The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe, there is a similar question which comes to mind, this time concerning sanity and the spirit world. The story is set in the old man’s home, at night time, when all is quiet but for the sound of the death watch beetles in the rotten wooden walls of the old house. Much superstition is placed on these insects, as they can often be heard in the dead of night as one keeps vigil over the sick and dying, and are therefore considered a bad omen. It is clear throughout the story, that the narrator believes in the superstition surrounding the death watches, as well as in other aspects of the supernatural, but was it this fascination

It is the narrator’s fascination with the occult and death that drives him insane, and his guilt over murdering the old man which leads to his downfall. The story The Tell-Tale Heart begins in a such a way that you are immediately drawn in and intrigued by the narrator’s words. The narrator reveals to the reader that he is considered mad by some, but states he is in fact not insane. He is simply gifted with the acuity of his senses, and so he starts to tell his story. It soon becomes evident that the narrator does not live alone, but with an old man, who's eye he is plagued by. He first describes the old man’s eye, in haunting detail, near the beginning of this gothic tale, “He had the eye of a vulture — a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees — very gradually — I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” Indeed, it is starting to become clear why one would suspect the narrator of being mad, for what sane

For example, the auditory hallucinations he hears, can be categorized as an intrapersonal, or person versus self type of conflict. One of the other main conflicts found in the story, the one of the narrator and his obsessive hatred for the old man’s diseased eye, is a person versus person, and a person versus self conflict. This is because the narrator both has a conflict with the old man and within his own mind. The old man’s eye is probably afflicted with cataracts, a common affliction in the elderly, as it is described as being, “a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” and not a curse, so the narrator’s behaviour is also representative of an internal conflict. It also speaks to the narrator being a highly superstitious and paranoid person, common traits in individuals suffering from certain types of mental illnesses. A good example of his paranoia can be found near the end of the story, where the narrator claims to hear the old man’s heart beat and confesses to the police officers his crimes, exclaiming “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! here, here! — It is the beating of his hideous heart,” although this is not at all possible, given the fact that the narrator murdered and dismembered the old man, and was most likely his guilt manifesting itself as increasingly intensifying