The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

The narrator butchered the man. That is an indisputable fact. The question is, is he sane? The narrator stalked an innocent man for 8 nights, then brutally murdered and grotesquely dismembered him. He then proceeds to put the body parts under the floor boards. The narrator talks about his surprisingly logical thought process, the careful and perfect execution of his plan, and his terrible guilt as he could hear the dead man’s heart beat. The defense will tell you that this man is an innocent, sedentary man, and that everything he did was the fault of his mental illness, but do not listen to them. This man is deleterious, and it is imperative that he is locked away. The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” was sane because he could distinguish fantasy from reality, he could feel guilt, and he was thinking logically. This evidence will prove that the narrator is sane.

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".

Salvador Dali once said “There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.” The personality of the main character in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is that of a madman even though he is in denial about it. The narrator tries to show this through examples. Poe suggests that the main character is crazy by narrator’s claims of sanity, the narrator’s actions, and the narrator hears things that are not real.

1.Why do you think Poe has set his story at night time, in the night?

I strongly believe that The Tell-Tale Heart is the most inappropriate, violent and hypocritical book middle school students should not be reading! In the book, the narrator--or as we may think of as the killer--watches an old man--with a pale blue eye-- every night about midnight. One, night, he creaks the door open and wakes the man up! Now, the old man is scared, so the narrator stood there for a whole hour,after shining the light in his eye,he smothers the old man and dismembers his body. This is why The Tell-Tale Heart is inappropriate for my age group.

Only 1% of the world’s population is legally insane. In the story “Tell Tale Heart,” I believe the unnamed killer fits the legal definition of “insane.” The legal definition of insane is the criminal couldn’t tell fantasy from reality, couldn’t tell right from wrong and couldn’t control his/her behavior. I believe the killer more than exceeds the criteria of insanity. In the story I found several instances to support my reasonings to find the killer insane.

The author purpose of telling this story is not about murder but more like convince about his sanity. The narrator start his story by saying he is super nervous but how do they know that he’s mad. Edgar Allan Poe is saying that how do we know he’s mad if we don’t know a person’s mind or feeling. So the purpose of the authors point is to convince us that the narrator has a disorder and act normal when he’s around the old man. Next, act in strange way when the old man is not looking. Like for example he examplains in the story “The tell-tale heart” “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually”. This quote not just explains his feeling about the old man eye but his anger and madness to kill him. According to Witherington Paul hi states in his source The Accomplice in The Tell-Tale Heart explains that” The verdict of madness, however come less from the story itself than from our commonly held assumptions that all obsessive murders are mad and that their madness is easily recognizable.” This quotes to me means that madness is easy to identify by observing a person behaver or his way of thinking. At last, I do think he may have had an illness that made him want to kill the old man.

Edgar Allan Poe was a horror writer in the early 1840’s. His works were described as macabre horror because of how disturbing and horrifying they were. Throughout "The Tell-Tale Heart" the anonymous narrator is trying to prove that he is not insane. I believe the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is insane because he shows the madman's traits of being delusional, and being quick-tempered.

Would you want your child reading short stories about killing and hiding bodies? Do you want your kids exposed to the bad idea of murder?Well Tell tale heart is about a man who had a disease that killed an old man over his pale blue eye that made his blood run cold. In my opinion, tell tale heart is inappropriate for 8th grade middle schoolers to read because it displays bad ideas,and teaches murder and violence.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” we are introduced to the narrator who is struggling with the possibility of being insane, and denies the possibility of insanity because of how well they think. Poe does not give the identity or gender of this narrator but he writes in a way so that we feel like the narrator is talking to us in person. The story continues with the narrator telling us about an old man who had one eye which resembled a vulture’s. The narrator states that he or she loved the old man but it was because of this one eye that the idea of murder entered the narrators mind. Again, the narrator denies the fact of madness because how well he calculated murder.

"A pale blue eye. With film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so be degrees--- very gradually--- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man thus rid myself of the eye forever.

For centuries, literature has provided us with insight on events and stories from a particular time and offer a variety of lessons for future societies. Additionally, literature has also enriched our individual experience by expanding our knowledge and influencing how we perceive the world. Through Abraham Lincoln’s “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg” and “Second Inaugural Address”, we witness the atrocities of war and an emphasis for the need of unification in a country. Alternatively, although “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe provokes an eerie emotion to readers, the story shows us how we as individuals tend to stay with that which is familiar. Nevertheless, Both Lincoln and Poe’s work show valuable

Despite the narrator’s emotions found in the information given to us, he seems to have kept a cool head. This character just murdered an old man yet “I smiled-for what had I to fear?” Poe shines light on the fact that this narrator is insane. This dangerous, mysterious and curious character is revealed in the

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.

“True!- Nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” In the story A Tell-Tale Heart the narrator believes that the actions he takes throughout the whole story are completely normal. The eye of the old man is what the narrator says possessed him to kill him. The central idea that Poe is revolving around the main character is the ideas of guilt, obsession, and madness. The author uses repetition to really exemplify that the narrator was obsessed with the eye of the man.