preview

Justice In The Tell Tale Heart

Decent Essays

“The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.” ~Lois McMaster Bujold. The deceased cannot tell someone to provide justice, only law enforcement can. This short story is one of many of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous stories. This story is about the narrator that takes care of an old man on a day-to-day basis. One day, he realized has been deeply disturbed by the old man’s eye for a while, which has a vulture-like cataract on it. He became so bothered that he slowly decided to kill the old man. He watches the old man sleeping for seven nights until the narrator makes a sound on the next night, and the old man wakes up and, in fear, opens his eyes. The narrator, upon seeing the eye, invades the old man’s …show more content…

In The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is guilty of murder because he was quiet and cautious to watch the old man by taking an hour to put his head through the door and when the narrator dismantles the old man’s body after the narrator suffocated him, he decided to kill the old man over time, and he let the officers into the home and lied to cover up the murder but at the end, he gave in to his guilt and chose to admit the deed to …show more content…

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

Get Access