Do you like stories with a creepy vibe and tons of suspense? The Tell Tale Heart has a lot of both. The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe is about a mentally unstable man who despises an old man’s vulture like eye. In fact, he hates it so much, he decides to go into his home at midnight every night for a week and watches him as he sleeps. Eventually, the man decides to murder the old guy when he wakes him up in the middle of the eighth night.
“ The Tell-Tale Heart” Interpretive Essay Is the complex character created by Edgar Allan Poe a calculated killer or a delusional madman. In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the main character has a mental condition which causes him to kill a neighbor. He believes that his neighbor has a “vulture eye” which is the reason why he killed him. Night after night, he watches the man and plans how to kill him. Then one night, he puts his plan into action.
The narrator was a crazy man, killing someone because of his own fear. The narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe was unreliable because he was crazy. An example of that would be “It was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (Poe 84). This means that the old man was a friend of his but he still wanted to kill him all because of his eye.
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.
If the Narrator in this story withstood a mental health review by a psychologist, they would say that he is “mentally ill” or if reviewed by psychologist of his time, “he is demon possessed”. Furthermore they would keep him under surveillance by a caretaker or psychiatric professional. Nevertheless he is still responsible for his actions; he killed a person and took the old man’s legs, head and arms form his body, and hide him under the floorboards of his room! Only an individual with an extreme mental illness or huge a passion to gain vengeance from another person! To begin this rant of arguments, the Narrator (is not given a name in the story) shows a lot of examples to prove that he is guilty, while not even noticing it.
Throughout the story, three major details of the narrator’s psyche are confirmed. First, we learned of the narrator’s deceitfulness. Every morning he lies to the old man with the least bit of guilt. The next continues to prove the madness as the narrator feels utter joy from the terror of another. Lastly, the narrator fabricates that the old man is simply not home to assure the officers.
Heart racing, breathing accelerating, perspiration building and hallucinations forming. A person dealing with this hectic state is in no good condition to tell a story from. A good narrator is aware, alert, in good health and is truthful. Under the stress of either a certain situation or even a mental illness, these characteristics of a good narrator become altered, twisted, and/or mutated. There are many stories that include a narrator who has hallucinations and is depicted as one with a mental illness.
The protagonist in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is the narrator, he is “very dreadfully nervous”, paranoid, and mentally ill. He cannot cognizes whether what he sees is real or unreal. He seems to be lonely and friendless. Also, he is a murderer. In spite of the fact that the narrator loves the old man, he kills him because he afraid of his blue “evil eye”.
He refers to himself as Death, implying he has all knowledge and power over the old man. The reader becomes filled with dread as the man patiently waits to kill. The imagery portrayed in “The Tell-tale Heart” increases the demented tone that the narrator projects as the main character waits to strangle the old man. Every night, for a week, the murderer would “look in” upon the victim as he slept.
The Tell-Tale Heart was told in the first person point of view. The narrator (also the main character) was paranoid and admitting he is nervous yet still sane creating a sad and sinister, slightly intense mood for the reader. This foreshadows that the narrator must have done something deviant and that others attribute him to have gotten insane. The narrator then tells the whole story to justify his sanity. The different conflicts in the story can already be determined—both internal and external: firstly, that the protagonist’s own conscience is haunting him (man vs. self); secondly, that the protagonist needs to prove his sanity (man vs. society); and that the protagonist wants to get rid of the eye of the old man (man vs. eye).
Throughout the story, it becomes more and more apparent that the narrator is not well mentally, as he experiences hallucinations and falls for his own lies. His mental illness decreases his credibility, because how could the narrator tell the true and reliable perspective of the story if he is telling it through the lens of mental illness and hallucinations? This was seen after the police came and visited the narrator. He lies to the cops about the murder and seems to be getting away with it, but that is when he suddenly hears a noise: a heartbeat. It increases in sound more and more, and that's when the narrator exclaims to himself: "The noise steadily increases.
The story's central character is an unnamed narrator who is driven to murder an old man because of his eye, which the narrator finds unsettling. While the story does not have a direct connection to the theme of love, it can be argued that it supports the theme of love in an indirect way. One possible way in which The Tell-Tale Heart can be seen as supporting the theme of love is through the character of the narrator himself. Although the story never explicitly addresses the issue of the narrator's motivations, it is possible to read the narrator's obsession with the old man's eye as a symbol for the all-consuming nature of love. The narrator's fixation on the eye is described in language that suggests both disgust and fascination, suggesting that his feelings towards the old man are more complex than simple hatred.
The Tell-Tale Heart is a story about an insane narrator claiming to his sanity after murdering an old man out of anxiety and panic. Many believe the evidence points to the narrator being a calculated killer. After reviewing the symptoms of the narrator I believe him to be a man plagued with anxiety issues and panic attacks. First of all, the only reason the narrator had for such crime was of his eye, the eye of a vulture, nothing else. Not for his gold, property, or vengeance just his eye.
Can you trust the narrator in Edger Allen Poe’s short-story/poem is accurately portraying the events? The short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” was written by Edgar Allen Poe, Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic, who is best known for his poetry and short stories. Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 7, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. He died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore, Maryland. The American short-story writer, poet, critic and editor who was famous for his cultivation of mystery and macabre.
The narrator of “The Tell-tale Heart” is a madman who does not believe he is insane but continues to show otherwise during the telling of how he kills the old man to police officers. After a week of planning the murder, he still did not find satisfactory because he could still hear the beating of the old man’s heart. Also, if one is not a madman then why would one commit such a crime just because of an eye. While the narrator explains the story of how and why he commits murder, one can conclude that some details are unrealistic throughout his story. Which leads him to come off as a psychopath because of the details and the reason behind killing the old man.
