Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and the Symbolism of the Eye

“The Tell-Tale Heart” Quote Analysis Throughout “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe enthralls the feeling of fear and dread. “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” (Poe 305). This quote shows the reader the narrator is insane. During the story, the narrator advises the reader he is not mad, yet he has a valid reason for hating the old man and his dysfunctional eye. This displays fear because the narrator never considers the old mans personality, only his grotesque physical feature.

Edgar Allan Poe is a known master of the literary arts. For example, the way he uses his razor-sharp senses to perfectly capture people’s attention. In his detailing of the old man's eye he says, “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture...a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees..very gradually..I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Line 11). This particular line evokes the narrator’s source of exaggerated annoyance. The narrator uses this one specific detail to justify the killing of an innocent old man. These ridiculous exaggerations are what makes Poe’s writing so wicked. Many of Poe’s stories like “Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven” are known for being indescribably

In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” Poe develops a narrator that is plagued by guilt and wishes to use the story to confess his murder. The narrator tells his story in first person. He fears being misunderstood, and sets out to explain to the reader the circumstances of what happened and essentially prove his sanity to the reader. From the beginning, the narrator describes what he wants to do to the old nervous he is getting, and that he hears things from heaven and hell. He’s trying to make sure that everyone knows that he not insane. He begins by telling the readers how much he loved the “old man”. While the narrator states in the beginning that the old man had never wronged him, he is nonetheless excessively bothered by the man’s eye, which he blames on his own “hypersensitivity.” He writes, “I saw it

The narrator tells his story to the readers from his perspective, explaining how “logical” his actions were, in order to prove to everyone that he is completely sane. He has no interest in attempting to prove his innocence in the murder of the old man, but rather goes to painstaking lengths to describe his murder and to justify it. Ironically, his effort to prove his sanity does exactly the opposite—it confirms without a doubt that the narrator is completely crazy. He prefaces his tale by saying, “Hearken! And observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (303).

The motivation for murder according to the narrator was “not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (Poe 922). However, it is possible that the eye symbolizes a necrosis of the narrator’s spirit. The narrator uses terms such as “infuriate”, “hideous”, “vulture” and “dammed” when describing the eye (Poe 923). These words are often used to describe the demonization of individuals who commit irrational crimes against humanity, such as the crime our narrator is confessing to, the murder and dismemberment of an innocent old man in his sleep. In “The Physiognomical Meaning of Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’”, Edward W. Pritcher states “it

1. He is not a reliable narrator because he is insane. Though he repeatedly states that he is sane, the reader suspects otherwise from his bizarre reasoning, behavior, and speech. ‘‘True—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?'' The reader realizes through Poe’s description of the narrator’s extreme nervousness that the protagonist has in fact descended into madness, as anxiety is a common symptom of insanity. He apparently suffers from some form of paranoia. Besides, the narrator claims that he loves the old man and has no motive for the murder other than his growing dislike of a cloudy film over one of the old man’s eyes. His madness becomes

This makes the narrator untrustworthy and unreliable. This also helps to illustrate Dark Romanticism’s questioning of mankind. Poe focuses on how unstable the narrator is and how the unconscious mind can destroy a man. The narrator drove himself absolutely crazy over the old man’s mysterious eyeball. He was obsessed with the eye and this caused the narrator to have extreme paranoia. The reader never finds out

it the most of the plot in the story. The title of the story gives the reader the symbol from the beginning, as the heart. Although he uses the heart as a symbol, Poe also uses other symbolic representations too. From the beginning of the story, the narrator tries to describe his reasoning in killing the old man. ?It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was

Poe's economic style of writing is a key instrument in making this story amazing. In this story, he uses his style to truly bring out what he intended for the story - a study of paranoia. In example, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever. " it is easy to see that Poe used short sentences, to capture the rapid thoughts of a twisted mind.

Do you think the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” was insane or murderous? “The Tell-Tale Heart” was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. This is a short-story 174 years old written by one of the most published authors of all-time. It was about a person who killed an old man, because the old man had an eye like a vulture’s. The narrator of the text was a murderer.

In the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses many varying symbols, symbols that represent more than one feeling or idea. The old man’s eyes in the story are symbolic of a few things. The eyes are symbolic of how old man had a distorted view of the world which could possibly be why the narrator felt he had to kill the old man. The narrator calls the eye the “vulture eye” symbolic of the narrator’s feeling that because of the eye the man is evil (“The Tell-Tale Heart”). Kenneth Silverman says, “... eyes in Poe’s works arouse the dread of being consumed” (207). This is similar to how the narrator felt that the old man’s eye was controlling and took over its surroundings. Poe also portrays a blindness symbolized

I think the eye symbolizes evil. The narrator had killed the old man because of his eye which looked like an “eye of a vulture a pale blue eye” and he wanted to get “rid … of the eye forever” (Allan Poe 2). Also, during the seven day period that he walked inside the old man's door, he referred to the eye as an “Evil Eye” (Allan Poe 2). Every time the narrator talked about the eye he was furious, which led him to even killing the old man, even though he didn’t hate the old man he still killed him because of the eye. This creates conflict for the narrator because then some policemen come and check his house. After the police inspects his house they “were satisfied” and sat and talk which made the narrator feel very nervous and “wished them gone”(Allan

The first piece of evidence is when Poe writes, “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. Ha! Would a madman have been so wise as this?” (Poe 3) The main idea of that quote is similar to another that is found in The Tell-Tale Heart. This is the part of the story where the narrator already murdered the old man and has dissembled the body and is hiding it. The narrator tells the audience, “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” ( Poe 12) He was silent and cautious to make sure he did not arouse the old man and attempted to not alert the neighbors of his devious deed. He thought wisely, and usually madmen do not think wisely. Insane people do things very recklessly and thoughtlessly when making decisions have been involved. That idea leads this essay into the next

From the beginning of the story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator claims that he is very nervous and sensitive, but not mad and insane. Throughout the whole story he tries to make the readers believe that he is not mad by comparing his actions with the actions of a mad man. He hated the old man’s eye and became obsessed with it, so he planned to kill the old man even though he loved the old man. He has “the sense of hearing acute” all the things from ‘the heaven’, ‘the earth’ and ‘the hell’ (Poe). This clearly shows that either he could be a psychotic killer or mentally diseased, even though his actions while killing were precise, pre-planned, and cunning. The more he is trying to prove he is not mad, the inconsistencies in his sayings show his killing for a small reason, and the confession at end of story prove him even more insane.

The motive of the main character is very important because this is what drives the entire story and its plot. “He had never wronged me. He has never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes,it was this! (Poe Lines 10-12). The main character wants to murder the old man because he does not like his eye. The old man never did anything bad to him, but he was still driven insane by the eye. He gets very mad and can only think about the eye. To stop his suffering, he decided to take the old man’s life just to not see his eye again. "He was caught in the machinery," said the visitor at length in a low voice (Jacobs Lines 254-255). The family had no intentions of murdering their son. This was news to them, when they were told that their son had died. They did not want him to die, and even sorrowed about it for days. In the Tell Tale Heart, the main character purposely murdered the old man instead of a