The Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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 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” by Edgar Allen Poe, it is classified as a short story with horror fiction as the genre. This was written in three different types of fear during the Romanticism period. In this short story the encounter is filtered through the eyes of the unnamed dynamic narrator. The narrator consumes upon the old man’s eye and determines to perform a conscious act of murder. Fear is defined as a horrid feeling that is caused by a belief that a person or something is unsafe, most likely to cause grief, or any type of threat. It is something that people can first experience as children, and is accustomed to respond to in many different ways. Some people live in constant fear; of accidents, of bad people doing any harm, or of physical disorders. Others only obtain things as they come in life, whether they are good or horrible things. Edgar Allen Poe describes fear in “The Tell-Tale Heart” in three ways such as gore, the mood, and insanity.

“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.

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.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator’s obsession causes an unjust death which culminates into internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The

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.

The narrator’s relationship with the elderly man is never disclosed in the story. What is known is that he feared the man’s “vulture eye”. It is describe as pale blue with a film over it. The narrator states that “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…” Due to this discomfort, the narrator believes the only rational solution to this problem is by killing the old man. His actions demonstrate the possibility that the narrator suffered from some variation of mental illness. In addition, the narrator tends to repeatedly tell readers that he isn’t mad. He doesn’t believe that any of his actions in the story make him mad. The narrator acts in a wisely but, cautious manner as he carries out the stalking and eventual murder of this poor old man, something in which he

Robert South once said “Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.” As this quote describes, guilt is terrible to feel and can drive a man insane. This is shown in the Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In the story, the narrator explains how he isn’t insane and just smart. He also says that he loved the old man, but had to kill him because of his one flaw, his vulture eye. He was so confident that he ignored his conscience and killed him. He hid the body under the floorboards so the police would have no evidence when they came. The narrator had committed the perfect crime but his heart beat with guilt and drew him insane to the point where he tore up the floorboards and confessed himself. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe uses symbols such as the narrator’s heart, the old man’s eye, and the narrator’s confidence to demonstrate a man’s fight with his conscience.

The major theme in “The Tell-Tale Heart” written by Edgar Allan Poe is guilt. By using dramatic irony, the narrator takes us day by day, explaining in great detail of his desire to be rid of the old man’s “vulture eye” Throughout the story the narrator tries to convince the readers of his sanity; that he is in fact not a mad man. He exclaims several times to the reader that he is not crazy in attempts to make us believe his plea. “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Poe, Cover Page). However, I think it is not the reader he is trying to convince of his sanity as much as he is trying to convince himself that he is sane. On multiple occasions, the narrator tries to justify his want and need to kill the old man in hopes that he will not feel guilt upon doing the deed which he has so calmly and cautiously contemplated over.

In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, author Edgar Allen Poe illustrates how a madman believes that his irrationality is in fact rational and sane. The narrator is beyond obsession unto the point of committing murder because his psychotic fixation makes him lose all sense of personal subjectivity and objective reality. Poe’s narrator who falls victim to believing that his subjective world is also the objective reality around him. His fleeting paranoia and hypersensitivity in his mental world lead to the impulsivity of his murderous plan.

Even if one feels they may have 'gotten away ' with a crime, the weight of a person’s conscience cannot be concealed. In someone’s life, too much power and control combined with a person’s conscience in a person’s life can and will lead to an imbalance and perhaps insanity as in the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe demonstrates how the narrator in this story goes through the greed and need for control, leading to his insanity that results in extreme guilt.

In the story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the moral is a simple one- murder is wrong. The story involves a young man committing “the perfect crime” for which he never expects to be caught. The detail he doesn’t account for is his guilt and paranoia, which leads to him being caught. “They heard!- they suspected! – they knew! – they were making a mockery of my horror”

More often than not there is an obscure parity and the wickedness is quelled; be that as it may, when there is a movement, for reasons unknown, the dim or insidiousness side of human instinct can surface. In human nature often times a person wants to rid their conscious of ill thoughts often times by committing violent acts. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the storyteller chooses to kill this pulse. He plans to execute his thoughts of the eye, “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 1843). The storyteller is threatened by the conferred ethics of the old man. This can be reached out into the bigger representation of the contention in mankind and the conferred profound quality of the heart inside. Mankind in strife with itself shows a mystery; is this inner voice regular, as well as the restriction to it, is additionally common. Humans often value their picture and practical status is more vital than their honesty. Poe sets up his stories in the space between the assurance of brutality in humankind and the questionable way of where this savagery originates from. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the wrongdoing itself is portrayed in computed subtle element for the reader to appreciate, yet the setting, inspiration, and general work are covered up. The Tell-Tale Heart displays a novel affirmation that the value of other’s opinion exists; “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story”(Poe 1843). Here the narrator is trying to prove to the readers that he is not insane. He would rather tell the readers that he is sane and have them on his side rather than proving he is not insane. Human instinct includes focusing on insignificant things, in the narrator’s case, an eyeball. Putting his potential franticness aside, the narrator focuses on the old man, and how angry he was with him over something as absurd as his

A short story called the “The Tell-Tale Heart” was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. In the story, the narrator kills an old man that can’t see. People debate on whether Poe’s narrators are mentally insane, or just really smart in most of his poems and short stories. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” can be classified as mentally insane or a calculated killer.