The Horror of The Tell-Tale Heart Essay

Every night he would watch the old man sleep. He found comfort in knowing that the eye was not watching him, that it could not see the true evil in him. While the eye was closed, so was the idea of killing the old man. It is not until the old man awakens each day that the struggle within him is apparent. This may be the reason why the narrator is so obsessed with watching the old man sleep. The actual act of murder, which the man believes was premeditated, was in fact a spur of the moment action. He toiled with the idea while the man was awake, that is, while he could see the "evil eye". However, while the eye was closed, the man was at peace. One night, during one of the man's "stalking" sessions, the old man awakens. The man goes into a paranoid frenzy, mistaking the beating of his heart for the beating of the old man's heart. During this frenzy, the man is afraid that neighbors will hear the beating of the old man's heart. This causes the man to take action. He quickly subdues the old man and kills him. He then takes extreme steps in disposing of the body, dismembering it and burying it under the planks in the floorboard. These extreme actions can be used as evidence to the paranoia that is taking over him. The fear of getting caught would be a normal reaction to someone who has committed a murder. However, the dismemberment of the body was not necessary since the man had ample resources to dispose of

Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.

“True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe) In “Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe illustrates that the narrator has an acute need of the old man’s vulture eye and eventually murders the man on the eighth night. The author highlights the events of the murder and soon, the narrator confesses to the police of his guilt. As Edgar Allan Poe fabricates this short story, he enthralls the readers by giving the events specific detail. If Edgar Allan Poe were to ever continue the story where the narrator would be put on trial, he would be guilty of premeditated murder. The reason for this is because the narrator cunningly planned the murder, had a motive of killing the old man, and finally at the end of the short story, he knew from right to wrong.

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”-Edgar Allen Poe. Edgar Allen Poe was a famous poem writer that was most well known for his taste of horror. What makes his poems so thrilling is how Poe uses words over and over again. In one of Poe’s most well known poems is the Tell Tale Heart. The man in the story is guilty of first degree murder because he reported it to the authorities and the man was driven insane because of the suspect's eye.

Insanity- the state of being mentally ill. Could insanity be an excuse for an unforgivable crime? In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, we come face to face with a man reliving his killing of an innocent man and learn the chilling state of mind the narrator has decreased to. It is clear he is mentally ill from the start of the story and it is constant throughout the text. The narrator is not guilty for reasons of insanity because he converses and argues with voices in his head, hears nonexistent sounds, and killed an innocent man because he believed his eye was haunting him. Some may claim that there is no excuse for murder, but this man is obviously mentally challenged, therefore should not be degraded any further

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, is a petrifying short story. Poe incorporated a variety of literary elements to intimidate the reader. Personification, theme, and symbols are combined to create a suspenseful horror story.

Like many of Poe's other works, the Tell-Tale Heart is a dark story. This particular one focuses on the events leading the death of an old man, and the events afterwards. That's the basics of it, but there are many deep meanings hidden in the three page short story. Poe uses techniques such as first person narrative, irony and style to pull off a believable sense of paranoia.

The narrator in Tell Tale Heart may have been mentally unstable by the end of his story, but was he mentally stable when he committed the murder? The evidence strongly suggests that he was mentally stable when he commited the crime because he knew what he was doing. When he suffocated the old man, he went so far as to chop up the body and hide it under the wooden tiles of his own home, and he was happy when he realized that he killed the man so that he didn't have to look at his eye anymore. All of this evidence points to him knowing what he was doing and realizing the consequences, which implies that he was mentally stable.

Have you ever read “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe? It is a short story about a man whose mental state deteriorates over time. The narrator loves the old man, however he has a deep hatred toward the old man’s vulture-like eye. This essay will be explaining the ways Poe keeps his readers in suspense. Edgar Allan Poe uses time, repetition, and descriptive language to set the pace, tone, and mood.

A person that brutally killed four people, and unaware of the very fact that he is the one that murdered all of 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, and in the end we find out he is the killer. “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

“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe the student becomes obsessively pushing his need for self-torture to the extreme. To become more sorrow, he calls for the bird to hear only one response to become morself-tortured.

   In Edgar Allen Poe's Short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" much is made of the "evil eye" of the old man. Immediately we are introduced to a man who would never hurt a fly. The narrator of the story even goes so far as to say he loved the old man. This old man is portrayed as one who would do anything for you. However, the caretaker of the old man has one small problem with the old man. The eye that darn evil eye! What could cause a person to become enraged by an eye and only one eye?

First, horror is developed in “The Tell Tale Heart” by the insanity of the narrator. The narrator believes he is a sane person, but contradicted himself when he kills the old man. This creates a complex in the character’s mind. When the police shows because the neighbors heard a yell, he begins to hear the old man’s heartbeat, but his guilt consumes him and he confesses to murdering the old man and putting his body underneath the floorboards. Also, in the beginning of the story, the narrator describes why he wants to kill the old man. “It was impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night” (Para. 2). His insane idea of killing the old man because of his vulture eye pops into his thoughts without a preconceived notion of doing so. The murder is premeditated and thought out as each night he cracks the door open and glares the lantern directly at the vulture eye. The insanity of the narrator develops “The Tell Tale Heart” into horror.

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

This leads Arthur Hobson Quinn to surmise that the intense picture of terror was so graphic because the narrator himself suffered causeless terrors in the night. Quinn further infers that the narrator has a deep sympathy for the old man, even though the narrator is scheming to kill the old man (394).