Tell Tale Heart Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” makes us question the narrator’s sanity almost immediately. The story is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing the gruesome murder that he committed. The victim is an old man with an “eye of a vulture” as the narrator describes in the story. The murder is meticulously calculated, and the criminal hides the body under multiple floorboards. Ultimately, the main character deserves life in prison, with aggravating and mitigating evidence to back it up.

In Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator is so bothered by an old man’s eye that he decides to kill him. In the end, he thinks he hears the beating of the old man’s heart even after he has died, so the narrator confesses to the police. Throughout the story, the narrator keeps insisting he is sane, “but why will you say that I am mad? The disease has sharpened my senses – not destroyed-not dulled them... How, then, am I mad?” (Poe). However, despite his constant justification of his judgment, on cannot help but question the narrator’s true sagacity.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe illustrates how obsession can quickly turn into madness and destroy its victim and those connected to them. The narrator tries to convince us that he is in full control of his thought yet he is experiencing a condition that causes him to be over sensitive. Throughout the story we can see his obsession proving his insanity. The narrator claims that he can be a bit anxious and over emotional, he is not insane. He tries to give proof this through the calmness of his tone as he tells this tale. He then explains how although he has much love for an old man who has always treated him kind, he

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.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe depicts a gruesome tale. His use of dark imagery and harsh words make this story an unmistakable product of the Dark Romantic period. Poe’s use of the first person narrator adds an important dimension to the story. The narrator’s thoughts are eating him alive and Poe clearly portrays this to readers by repeating words and having the narrator constantly question himself:

“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

So speaks the narrator of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, who goes in great depth to explain how he kills the old man neither out of hatred, nor anger, nor desire for his gold but simply because of his eye. The narrator only strikes on the day that he sees the man’s blue eye, even though the narrator has had the opportunity to kill the man for the seven previous nights. The narrator tries to convince the reader that he has a justified reason to kill the old man, however there are too many subtle nuances

The initial analysis will be that of the old man’s eye. Mr. Poe uses very descriptive technique to allow the reader to view the eye for themselves, there are no literal pictures within the pages of the story, the pictures are therefore seen mentally, and the description is one way that the author incorporates imagery

In “Tell Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe recounts the events of the murder of an old man through the eyes of an unreliable narrator. The narrator obsessively watches the old man sleep every night. On the eighth night, the old man senses the narrator’s presence and cannot go to sleep. The narrator, convinced that the man had fallen asleep, approaches the man as he usually does only to discover that the man was in fact awake. Overwhelmed with panic, he attacks the old man and ends up killing him.

Poe uses the narrator’s internal thoughts to develop a character who clearly has many contradicting thoughts and feelings as he fights his inner conscience. In the beginning of this excerpt, Poe clearly describes what the narrator is thinking by saying in lines 2-3, “I went down to open it with a light heart, - for what had I now to fear?” Poe’s use of the term “light heart” and stating that the narrator had nothing to fear demonstrates this man’s battle against his own conscience after having just murdered a man. Later in the excerpt, in lines 27-28, Poe again describes the narrator’s thoughts and feelings during an idle chat with the officers directly above the place where he has hidden the corpse of the old man under the floorboards. The narrator recalls the feelings he had by explaining, “My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears.” These

“The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allan Poe, is a literary masterpiece. It is written from the unique perspective of a madman who is out to kill an old man because of his “Evil Eye”. The man accomplishes this but is overcome with guilt in the form of a “beating heart” for he loved the man. The madman gives himself up to the police when he can’t bear to hear the “heart” any longer. The original version of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is far superior to the version written by me in a different perspective.

Guilt, pain, and love can haunt a man. However sometimes it all just may be self-inflicted. Buried in the bedroom: witness to incest in Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart, by Robert M. Kacthur, is a report of insect. Kacthur’s interpretation of Poe’s tale is that one a father and son. The son does indeed love his father but is hurt. We are given the idea that the young man is crazy, so the instant conclusion is insanity, however, could it instead be psychodramatic. The narrator is scared of the old man, he feels weak and wants the old man to feel the same. The night the boy snaps and sneaks in to kill his father is the same action the man did to him. The overwhelming feeling of power sliding into control you and being too weak or scared to protect yourself. When the young man is in the room with his father he drags him out the bed. The bed to Kacthur’s study is the key, makes the predator's weapon of abuse his demise. Even the act of dismemberment speaks to the pain of an abused child. Children who were abused lose the ability to feel empathy for others. The young man feels no remorse for these actions, he pleases and feels freedom for once.

There is no such extreme desire to murder somebody because we do not tolerate a part of their body, and moreover, feel pleasant and with no guilt when telling the way you did it. However, in "The Tell-Tale Heart" the narrator not only think his neighbor's eye need to be taken, but also, he tells the detailed story how he did it and justify himself moving the guilt to his "evil eye". Apart from this, he assures to have no madness, what in the story makes you think twice the motives of doing such thing.

Poe uses all sorts of different structure choices during the short story to keep it all balanced or add onto the story. He used repetition in multiple phrases. He also uses time and pacing to make the short story seem like it happened on a basis of time and give thought to the reader. He even uses some function of punctuation to help with building up sentences and how they set up a mood or tone for the paragraph. The young man is quite the weird one he starts out just talking as though he were being asked about what happened, which could mean he had already done it at the first two paragraphs. So, there is another way he manipulated time to build the story. This man was rather obsessive and it wasn’t even over something valuable it was literally just him being so angered by the old man’s eye and his heartbeat that he became obsessed. Then after he had finished the job he decided to start, this man ratted himself out after going through with his plan, he went absolutely insane with guilt, that he even showed where he hid all the body parts. To say the least this man has a guilty obsession that is not so

A person that brutally killed four people is completely unaware of the very fact that he is the one that murdered them. “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King, is a story that takes place at New Sharon college at the start of strawberry spring, and the narrator, tells the story about how there is a killer on the college campus, named Springheel Jack, and in the end we find out that the narrator is actually Springheel Jack. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story from the perspective of a mentally ill woman, who is on a summer stay at a colonial mansion, and her husband makes her stay in a bedroom to treat her mental illness, however the result is compromised due to the wallpaper in the room making her feel more ill than ever before. Lastly “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a story about a man who is also mentally ill and he kills the old man that he takes care of because the old man had a vulture eye that bothered him very greatly. What makes someone an unreliable narrator is that there is something that makes them not trustworthy or reliable, such as being a murderer or unaware of things happening around you. This is why the narrator from Stephen King’s “Strawberry Spring” is the most unreliable narrator because he is oblivious to what is really happening; that he is a merciless killer.