Who Is Justified In The Tell Tale Heart

“The Tell Tale Heart” is a story of a madman who feels justified in his murder of an old man. In this short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in the early 1840’s, a crazy man is ever tormented by the eye of an old man. In order to free himself from the agony, he decides to kill the old man. After many days of plotting the murder, the killer sneaks into the old man’s house and kills him. Even though the killer was able to hide the body and get away with the murder, he is still being tormented by what he believes is the heart of the deceased man. This pain eventually overcomes him and he is forced to confess his sins to the police. Throughout this story, the narrator tries to plead his sanity to the reader, but it is quite obvious that these are

One good example of this is how the killer describes his movement into the house. The story states that, “Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed” (Poe). To the narrator, we are being given an example of how cunning he is. To any normal person, this point of view instead shows just how mad this man really was in his quest to end the old man’s

This story contains a thorough amount of symbolism, but one example stood out among the others. In the story, the narrator tales of the old man’s eye bewitching him day and night. An example of this eye is given in the text, ”I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones” (Poe). This eye may very well represent nothing other than the killer's own mind. The dullness represents the numbness the narrator has to killing the innocent man, while the hideous veil could be the insanity that has taken over the afflicted man’s