Outline For The Tell Tale Heart Research Paper

As highlighted by several symbols throughout the story, the most prevalent theme in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of ascending guilt and paranoia. The only information that the audience of this tale has about the narrator is what each can gather from the details of the story. The narrator constantly pleads with his listeners that he is not insane. However, through several symbols, the true deranged mental state of the narrator shines forth. Suffocating a man simply because of a cataract or a similar medical condition is unreasonable to the average person, however, is the reasoning behind the narrator’s crime. Through personifying the eye and persuading the audience to believe that it is as evil as he believes, the narrator uses imagery to strengthen his case. Edgar Allen Poe, through this unreliable madman of a narrator, paints a picture of paranoia, murder, and guilt through imagery.

How murder first came to enter the narrators mind is unknown. There was no real motive as said: “Object there was none... I loved the old man. He had never wronged me...” (884.) The narrator states that the old man's eye was a pale blue color with film over it, resembling a vulture. The narrator insists that he is not insane however his repeating of this, and his actions, contradict one another. Being so threatened by the old man's eye, the killer attacks his master at night, cuts up his body and buries it beneath the floor boards. Although the old man had sensed his killer in his bedroom, he was too terrified to run for his life. The fact that the narrator kills this innocent old man because of his eye is proof enough he suffers from psychological imbalance To further the evidence that the narrator is, he continues to hear the man's heart beat beneath the floor boards. Although it seems as if it is his own heart beating, he automatically assumes the old man's heart is haunting his mind. The characters are what play the key role in this short story. The killer is suffering from insanity, which he believes is the cause of the evil eye. The old man is never really developed within the story, just known he is innocent and has never wronged his killer. The old man could just represent an innocence who is opposite of a murderer's mind. Within the whole plot the characters unfold an unsettling dark theme for the story; a cold hearted killer and a loving old man with an

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".

All throughout Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the reader follows along as the narrator explains the eight days where he plotted against the old man. During this explanation, the readers forms an opinion on if the narrator is a calculated killer or mentally insane. It is understandable why some people might think that the narrator is a calculated killer because of the planning that the narrator mentions. However, there are more scenes where the narrator can be interpreted as being mentally insane. Therefore, the narrator is better described as mentally insane because he can “hear” the heartbeat of the old man and he acted upon impulse when he killed the old man.

Edgar Allan Poe, an infamous writer, is known for his mysterious and somber tales sharing similar themes of insanity. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of his most illustrious stories, published in 1843, that shares the chilling murder of a man through the point of view of the killer. Another one of Poe’s works, “The Cask of Amontillado”, published in the year of 1846, similarly tells of a murder fueled by the narrator’s desire of revenge. Both of Poe’s stories have mentally unstable narrators with like qualities, however, their personalities, motives, and guilt presented in the story vary greatly.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1890. He was an American romanticism author, poet, editor and literary critic. He studied languages at the University of Virginia and married his thirteen year old cousin. Poe having lived a troubled life and losing his parents to tuberculosis at a young age, wrote many sad and morbid stories containing themes such as death, murder, insanity, paranoia, sickness, and tragedy. “The Tell- Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” all contain some or all of these said themes.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to

“I smiled, for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream.” The Tell Tale Heart is one of Edger Allan Poe’s most famous and creepiest stories. The premise of this gothic short story is that a man’s own insanity gives him away as a murderer. By using the narrators own thoughts as the story Poe displays the mental instability and the unique way of creating a gothic fiction. While other stories written by Poe reflect this same gothic structure and questionable sanity, this story has a unique way of making the reader walk away from the story with an uncomfortable feeling. The mental struggles the narrator faces might as well reflect the depression and other psychological issues Edgar Allan Poe was confronted with in his own life.

A person’s psychological struggle and guilt may lead to a mental breakdown. This situation is illustrated in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The story is about an insane man who kills an old man for having a “vulture eye.” The man then tries to prove his sanity by a giving detailed account of the cold, calculated murder that he committed. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Poe demonstrates internal conflict through the descriptive language he uses to depict the narrator’s inner turmoil and the elaborate plot.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a man is murdered and dismembered at the hand of an insane unnamed narrator. The narrator goes on to defend his sanity by pushing the audience question what it means to be sane. When an opportunity arises for the narrator to convince officers that all is normal, he collapses under the weight of his guilty conscious. The actions of the unnamed narrator illustrate an image of today’s society and its view of mental illnesses, but overall makes the audience question the meaning of insanity.

Edgar Allen Poe uses the man in our story Tell-Tale Heart, the first-person narrator to relate to human reactions to guilt and temptations while suffering from a mental disability. He conveys this message through various literary devices such as symbol, character, narration and historical context.

The Tell Tale Heart' is a story about a man who killed an old man just

In Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator explains how he is not mad, how cautious he is in planning a murder. A person can argue however with the narrator of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, which he is indeed mad. The anxiety the narrator experiences through out the story makes him mad, it is also the guilt that brought on more anxiety to the narrator at the end of the story. The narrator constantly speaks of how he is not mad; he constantly as the reader why would they think he is mad. “True! –nervous-very, very, dreadfully nervous. I had been and still am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 884). The narrator does not believe that he is a mad man, much less have any mental issues. In “Overview: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’” the

The meticulous process by which the narrator properly rids himself of death portrays his careful planning of the crime he committed. A plan he thoroughly executes throughout the story, therefore exhibiting his cunning ways. For instance, the narrator explicates precisely how cleverly he purges himself of

     In Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the storyteller tries to convince the reader that he is not mad. At the very beginning of the story, he asks, "...why will you say I am mad?" When the storyteller tells his story, it's obvious why. He attempts to tell his story in a calm manner, but occasionally jumps into a frenzied rant. Poe's story demonstrates an inner conflict; the state of madness and emotional break-down that the subconscious can inflict upon one's self.