The Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

“The Tell Tale Heart” is a famous short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. The story was first published in 1843. This story is about an unnamed man who kills an elderly man due to his “vulture eye”. The man serves as the narrator in this story and describes to readers in detail as he carefully stalks the man, kills him and hides his body under his floorboards after he cuts him up. Eventually, the narrator’s guilt eats him alive to the point that he confesses his crime to three visiting policemen. His guilt takes form as the old man’s heart, which he believes is still beating underneath the floorboards. This short story is considered one of the Poe’s most famous short stories as well as a Gothic fiction classic.

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the reader is presented with the short story of a madman who narrates his murder of an old man because, “he had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe 105). The narrator has thought thoroughly about his plan to murder this old man, and the murderer then stashes his body underneath the floorboards. Eventually, his guilt overcomes him and he starts hallucinating that he hears the old man’s heartbeat. Ultimately, he confesses to the police about his crime after being driven to the point of insanity due to his remorse. “The Tale Tell Heart” is one of Poe’s best-known stories because he utilizes the elements of Gothic Literature to establish a disturbing sense of mystery throughout the story. Farida characterizes Gothic Literature as “the elements of fear, horror, the supernatural and darkness” (Foster 1), and Poe effectively adopts this style in many of his short story. These ominous characteristics give the story both a dark and spontaneous sequence of events that draws the reader in. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe employs several Gothic elements such as the setting, emotion, and the word choice in order to communicate an uncertain description of reality. In any case, Poe 's technique definitely holds your attention coming into the story.

Edgar Allan Poe has a dark sense of literary meaning. Within "The Tell-Tale Heart" it 's shown when Poe incorporates dark elements of literacy through the guilt of a murder. Which became forced out by the hypothetical beating of a heart.

I am doing my essay on “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. I am going to tell you about the author and what he is greatly known for, next I will summarize the story and tell you the main themes and parts of the story that really play a big role in the story, then I will describe all the symbolisms in the story, and last I will prove that the deed drove the narrator insane more than he was already.

In “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator both experiences guilt from killing the old man in which he cared for and also the constant plea of proving his sanity. The narrator one day decides that he should kill the old man in which he cares for, due to the fact that he had an evil eye. Though insane and bizarre, the narrator thinks that he is not crazy; he just has heightened senses that allow him to hear things that no human could ever hear. The telling of the story from whatever prison or asylum the narrator is sentenced to is his way of proving his sanity. In the "Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allan Poe uses irony, imagery, and symbolism to depict how the guilt of a human being will always be consumed by their own conscience.

The motivation for murder according to the narrator was “not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (Poe 922). However, it is possible that the eye symbolizes a necrosis of the narrator’s spirit. The narrator uses terms such as “infuriate”, “hideous”, “vulture” and “dammed” when describing the eye (Poe 923). These words are often used to describe the demonization of individuals who commit irrational crimes against humanity, such as the crime our narrator is confessing to, the murder and dismemberment of an innocent old man in his sleep. In “The Physiognomical Meaning of Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’”, Edward W. Pritcher states “it

This makes the narrator untrustworthy and unreliable. This also helps to illustrate Dark Romanticism’s questioning of mankind. Poe focuses on how unstable the narrator is and how the unconscious mind can destroy a man. The narrator drove himself absolutely crazy over the old man’s mysterious eyeball. He was obsessed with the eye and this caused the narrator to have extreme paranoia. The reader never finds out

Poe has written this story through a major character who was the killer of the old man with the “eye of a vulture.” The first person point of view makes the reader feel as though they have a personal connection to the event as it gives them an insight into the thoughts and feelings of the murderer. What makes the situation so horrific is that the narrator continues to plea his sanity whilst carrying out such an atrocious act. He tries to convince the reader how cautiously the murder was planned and how a mad person would not be capable of such precision.

The narrator 's desire for complete control, particularly of the old man and his evil eye which bothers him so much it leads him to commit his evil deed. He says that he did not have a motive for killing the old man other than his disgust at the man 's pale blue filmy eye. He describes the eye as "the eye of a vulture" and an "Evil Eye" and he confesses that it frightened him; once he got it into his head to kill the man, he could think of nothing else (Bouchard). “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 forever” (Poe 1). He believes that the elimination of the old man, and the successful dismemberment and hiding of the corpse, will ease his extreme nervousness and his madness that will give him complete control over his life within the house. Poe’s interest is less in external forms of power than

With the story being so short, it is clear that there is thematic symbolism of the elderly man’s eye. The narrator first introduces the eye when discussing why he wanted to kill the old man. In admitting that the man never did him wrong and that he loved him but, he concludes that “it was his eye!” that haunted him. He goes on to describe that “He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” (Poe 691). It is made clear very soon that the eye is not only of importance but also the cause of conflict. The narrator separates the eye, which he calls the “Evil Eye”, from the man. While it is not the old man that is the problem, it is the eye; he says “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 691). The eye is what triggers his ultimate rampage of murder and dismembering. E. Arthur Robison from the University of California explains that “his [the narrator’s] sensitivity to sight is equally disturbing, for it is the old man’s eye which first vexed him and which he seeks to destroy.” There is importance in the idea of the eye triggering an immediate and quick action, the murder, while the rest of the story is prolonged. He

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a strange story about a mentally “crazy” murderer who insists he is sane, in spite of his insane act of murdering his “vulture eyed” housemate and his delusions that include hearing his housemate’s heart beat after his death. In the end, the “crazy” murderer’s heart is full of guilt, and he decides to confess his crime. To further understand the story to a certain point, three of the literary elements are explored: point of view, settings, and theme. The Tell-Tale Heart focuses on the storyteller’s own point of view; his compulsive, absurd obsessions.

In the first-person short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe Men have guilty intentions. A man can have a heart and do something harmful and have guilty intentions afterwards. It has a lot to do with how a person is feeling on the inside to actually determine their intentions. "The Tale-Tell Heart" follows an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity after murdering an old man with a "vulture eye". From the complex of all of Poe 's short stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart" it is the most mysterious and psychologically intriguing. The culmination in this brief narrative shows death, madness, and with troubled human relationships all find. There are many aspect especially for a person who is interested in the workings of the human mind. Crimes committed on the ground of insanity can be justified due to the ‘state of mind’. Everyone has a breaking point, for some it is sooner than others. All our actions to mental state, physical state, or another reason we create. No matter what we always find some reason why our actions may be right in our eye. In” The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe attempt to prove this statement true. As reading the story you will see the breakdown of the human mind and how paranoia and insanity go hand and hand.

“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.

“I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs”, said the madman (39). In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the themes are vital for readers to identify with the madman’s reasoning of every single action he executes. Such events as in the first sentence would be difficult, if not impossible, to grasp without the knowledge of any themes. While some individuals may feel that themes are merely add-on elements in similar tales, this analysis will establish quite the contrary. The themes are crucial to the comprehension of this narrative. If these topics were eradicated: readers would not understand the protagonist 's journey, there would be a very minute amount of information to express, readers would find it complicated to discover whether or not the madman was actually mad, and they would not learn the moral of the overall story.

Chronologically, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” written in 1843, enveloped the reader in a sense of impending insanity as they experienced the story. The narrator, filled with disconcerting elan, recalls his murder of an old man. It benefited from Poe’s vast understanding of