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The Tell-Tale Heart Insanity

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Sanity in a man means surviving extremely stressful situations by interacting accordingly. One can say that the root of madness is the environment a man is place in. The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is in a situation where guilt can either make his sanity or brake it completely. Poe uses character and tone to show how guilt drives the narrator's descent into madness. The narrator is completely out of control. He is “very dreadfully nervous,” (341) paranoid, and mad. He does not seem to understand the difference between the real and the unreal, which makes him murderer an innocent old man. The narrator claims that he had to kill the old man simply to be free of the power of his eye because “Object there was none. Passion …show more content…

After the murder, the narrator is tortured by the beating heart ringing in his ears, even as he claims to have enjoyed it. Frequently, the narrator insists that he is not crazy; however the reader soon realizes that the fear of the “eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (342) has absorb the narrator to the point that he has become a victim to the madness. When the police visit, the narrator feel cocky and that nothing can touch him. He believes that he has commit the perfect murder until his guilty conscience starts to bother him. He hears the old man’s heart is still beating which drives him to “I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards” (343). The heart beats builds the suspense and tension, and the narrator does not think he can bear a minute more of “those hypocritical smiles” that mock “[his] horror!”(343) The possibility of his crime being discover drive his guilt into a mental defenses break down. Ultimately, there is no doubt that the narrator has lost his losing his mind. He begins to act more and more carelessly, finally getting of his sit and claiming: “"Villains!" I shrieked, "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! Here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!”” (p. …show more content…

John Chua, multimedia associate with the National Council of Teachers of English, argues that the murder is really an act of suicide and that the protagonist and the old man are equals. Notably, the police find no evidence of an old man in the house. Is possible that the beating heart is really the sound of the narrator’s own heartbeat. As he becomes more excite, his guilt mounts, and his heartbeat seems to grow louder. The tone of the story is paranoid and agitated. When describing the killing of the old man, the narrator is a combination of a matter-of-fact way and excitement. Throughout the whole story the narrator tries to prove his not mad but everything he does or says proves him otherwise. At one point he tells the readers that he has nothing at all against the old man but he had to stop the evil eye as if it was the most logical thing to do. The use of exclamation points and words like “Ha!” with short, choppy sentences are example of a hysterical

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What he heard was his guilt. The heartbeat was probably his own growing anxious that there were three cops in the room where he killed a man the night before. And that man's body was underneath the floorboards. The heartbeat was a metaphor for his guilt boiling over. He felt guilty for the murder he had just committed.

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Throughout the story, the narrator presents himself as an animal, lacking emotions and the ability to show sympathy. He takes pride in killing and stalking the old man like an animal, and even brags about committing the perfect murder. “‘Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see!

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When he is sneaking into the old man’s room on the eighth night he thinks to himself “the sound would be heard by a neighbor”(p 2). He is talking about the man’s heart beating. There is no possible way that he you can hear someone else's heartbeat from that distance or at that volume. It is not actually there he just thinks he hears it. While the man is talking to the police “the noise arose over all and continually increased.

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— 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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The narrator did not know that this “heartbeat” could be his own trying to tell him to surrender to the crime he committed. He could not tell right from wrong when killing the old man and be so proud of his deed. He didn't know if he did the right thing by killing the old man for his vexing eye. “ … Rid myself of the eye forever.” (pg 1).

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He uses symbolism to portray simple objects into something vital to give them a deep significance throughout the story. For example, the text states, “there came to my ears a low, dull quick sound… the old man’s terror must have been extreme… and now a new anxiety seized me --- the sound would be heard by a neighbor.” The narrator heard the heartbeat of the old man getting “louder and louder”, but he felt that others could hear it, even though they actually couldn’t. The narrator felt that he just had an “over-acuteness of sense” , but the heart beating was his own anxiety and fear seizing him. His nervousness and fear builds up to the suspense of how he will act act at the end of the story and if he will actually confess.

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This is a prime example of the narrator’s insanity, of which he had been attempting to hide throughout the entire story. “‘Villains,’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-is the beating of his hideous heart” (18). So, as you can see, the narrator has completely lost it. He may not know it, but the heart beat he had been hearing was his own.

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Thump, thump, thump. Do you hear the sound of the old man’s beating heart? That sounds is from a horribly story. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, is about a unnamed narrator claiming  that he is nervous but not mad, and he killed the old man because he hates the old man’s eye. Eventually, he confess his crime.

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The beating the murder heard could of very possibly be the old mans heart or simply deathwatch beetles. The murder explains he hears beetles after frighting the old man during the night. These beetles or a sign of impending death , these insects create ticking sounds and a sound very close to a heart beat. Furthermore the heart beat heard by the murder could of also been his own , from the overwhelming amount of feelings and thoughts that ran through his/her mind. The crime that was commited started running through his/her mind with an unbeliable amount of guilt to follow which leads to the murders senses to feel uncontroable.

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He thinks that is was the old man’s heart beating. It grew louder and louder! He thought he was going to either scream or die. He ended up admitting the deed, because he couldn’t stand it any

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The repetition of phrases like "I heard it," "I felt it," and "I loved the old man" repeatedly heightens the tension and creates a sense of foreboding. As time goes on, foreshadowing reveals the narrator's desires and eventual catastrophe. The narrator's instability is made clear in the opening paragraph, which foreshadows his eventual mental collapse. The narrator's dislike of the elderly man's protruding eye serves as another premonition of his unreliability and eventual mental collapse.

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This quote shows that the narrator believed that the sound, only he was hearing, was the beating heart of the old dead man. The repetitive thud finally took control over the narrator’s thoughts, causing him to come to his breaking point. This leads to the narrator turning himself in for the murder for he could no longer deal with the beating heart. The guiltiness of his own actions finally reached

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He became even more anxious when the noise grew louder and was convinced that it came from outside of himself. According to the narrator, his actions began to betray him: he began to pace the floor, to race, and even to foam at the mouth. He became convinced that the police could hear the sound of the old man’s heart but said nothing, thereby making ‘‘a mockery of my horror. ’’ Unable to stand the agony of being ridiculed, the narrator called the detectives ‘‘villains,’’ admitted to his crime, and directed them to the source of the sound.

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