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Edgar Allan Poe : Conscience Of The Insane

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Supriti Maharjan
Professor Chandler
English 1302, Section 71501
30 October 2017

Conscience of the Insane
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It follows with an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after killing an old man with the misconception of his eyes. The murder is done very precise and sharp-witted but ultimately the narrator’s self-condemnation betrays himself in the delusion that the man’s heart is still beating under the floorboards. The story has not mentioned what relationship the old man and his murderer shares. The story grips the readers’ imagination through suspense. The narrator opens the story by claiming that he is not mad. The narrator says that he is going to tell a story in which he will vindicate his saneness yet confess to having killed an old man. As the reader reads into this tale, he only proves his insanity since he contradicts himself throughout the story. More to the story, the narrator develops an obsession with the old man where he watches him in his sleep. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” uses irony, imagery and symbolism as his literary element to depict how frighteningly twisted the mind of the narrator truly is and how a guilty conscience alters one’s perceptions.
The narrator constantly proclaims how mentally stable and sensible he is. This is ironic because as he is describing his activity and motives for the murder he is only manifesting his madness. The irony of the narrator's account in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is

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