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The Tell-Tale Heart Literary Analysis

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Any literary analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” undoubtably must assess two things: the narrator and the eye of the old man. The narrator is a first-person central narrator, and also the main character of the story taking place. Everything that is seen, heard, or felt as a reader is experienced alongside the narrator. Whenever a story is told in first individual perspective, it should be perused with an incredulity that the storyteller is temperamental. The narrator tells the readers of his love for the old man, and how he treated him well - which would establish that there is no reason for his growing desire to terminate the man’s life. Alternatively, “it was his eye! yes, [sic] it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale …show more content…

Perusers can consider the storyteller of "The Tell-Tale Heart" reliable in that he was the main individual present at the season of the murder other than his casualty and would thusly know where the body was concealed. He opens the story by conceding that he has a disease that he calls a “nervous disorder," yet he denies that he is insane. The narrator attempts to demonstrate his point by how unbiasedly and tranquilly he recounts his story. The narrator must be dependable in the event of how efficiently he designs his murder once he had chosen the need to confer it. He takes the peruser during that time paving the way to his crime - how he wins the old man's trust, and how quietly he accesses his bedchamber. The storyteller's record of how he arranged and executed the murder is itemized enough to be credible. He is personally comfortable with the old man's room and sufficiently mindful to realize that he should conceal all proof of the wrongdoing. In spite of the fact that the storyteller confesses toward the denoumet of the story, his confession does not hurt his validity since he demonstrated toward the start of the story that he is beset with an apprehensive condition. The idea of being convicted of the crime outwits him and he confuses the anxious pulsating of his own heart for that of his

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story about a mentally-ill unnamed narrator who tries to prove he is not insane after murdering an old man because of his villainous eye. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Allan Poe often uses repetition and similes to describe the frightening old man’s eye and to effectively develop the experience of the narrator committing the crime. Allan Poe first recalls that the old man’s heartbeat “grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant... it grew louder, I say louder every moment!”

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While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.

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A Literary Analysis Of The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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Poe uses the experiences and actions by both narrators to create a sense of tension and menace. Although, the narrator is justified he needs to kill the man, the reason behind it truly brings out the psychological terror within him. The old man had ‘never wrong [the narrator] …had never given [the narrator] insult,’ however what haunted the narrator was just a simple eye. A simple eye that had done nothing besides make the narrator’s ‘blood run cold…that [arose] from the bottom [his] soul.’ Demonstrating how frightened the narrator is, how far he is willing to go just to lose the sight of looking at the old man’s ‘vulture eye.’

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The Tell Tale Heart is narrated anonymously yet extremely in depth, leaving the reader with an ominous perspective. The use of first person creates a mysterious interpretation for the readers as we construe the tale from an individuals point of view, looking into the story. The story builds up upon the narrator’s guilt over intentionally killing an innocent man. A suspicious neighbor cries out for help after hearing a shriek and three policemen investigate the situation. During the climax, the narrator is at the greatest intensity of guilt and craze.

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In The Tell Tale Heart, the unreliable narrator lived with the man he use to take care of and loved. He got annoyed by the glass eye he had, he thought the eye could see through him and his thoughts. He planned it for 8 days how he’d kill him, so he knew what he was doing, and watched him at night. The narrator also chopped him up into little pieces and put him under the floorboards, the police came from a neighbor calling the police.

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2192 Words | 9 Pages

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