The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Essay

A short story I have recentrly read which has an incident or moment of great tension is, "the Tell - Tale Heart," written by Edgar Allen Poe. The short story can produce many different "types" of characters. Usually, these characters are faced with situations that give us an insight into their true "character". The main character of the story is faced with a fear. He is afraid of an Old Man's Eye that lives with him. The actions that this charecter or "man" - as he is known in the story - performs in order to stop his fear can lead others to believe that he suffers from some sort of mental illness. The very fact that this man is so repulsed by the old man's eye, which he refers to as "the evil eye", is reason enough to be suspicious of

In the poem, “The Raven,” a raven flies into the narrator’s room, giving hope to the narrator that he will soon see his lost love, Lenore, again. However, it is hard for the narrator to find trust in the raven, as the raven’s “eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming” (104). As demons are generally associated with evil and cruelty, the comparison of the raven’s eyes with a demon’s eye suggests the devious nature of the raven. Being compared to a demon could foreshadow that the raven’s intentions are immoral. Likewise, in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a man whose eye “resembled that of a vulture” (1). The eye is compared to a vulture’s because the narrator believes it is evil; additionally, vultures usually correspond with sins and dishonorable actions. The analogy creates more suspense for the reader as the narrator slowly loses his sanity and goes mad because of the old man’s eye’s similarity to a vulture’s eye. Another example from “The Tell-Tale Heart” is when the narrator sneaks into the old man’s room. His plan is to kill the man, so he was extremely cautious; a “watch’s minute hand moved more quickly” than his (2). Poe compares the slow-paced movements of the narrator to that of a watch’s hand. The narrator’s unhurried motion creates tension as it shows how careful and deceitful the narrator is being. The

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.

Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" appears, at first glance, to be a tale of a murder without motive. The narrator even goes so far as to assure the reader that he lacks a motive to murder the old man since, "Object there was none. Passion there was none" (Poe p ). He also boldly proclaims, "I loved the old man" (Poe p ). However, a closer examination of the story implies that an irrational obsession with the old man's "evil eye” motivates the narrator to commit murder. This obsession, which seems to be a result of the narrator’s hypersensitive condition, morphs into an overwhelming fear of the eye. At one point, the narrator attempts to justify his fear of the eye by declaring the old man, "had the eye of a vulture --a

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a gothic short story written by Edgar Allen Poe. It is about a psychotic unnamed man, who happens to be the narrator that kills and hides the body of an older man who lives with him. The narrator is not really straight forward as to the reason for committing the murder but one can assume that he is afraid of the evil eye. The narrator states that the “vulture eye” made his “blood run cold”. For this reason, the narrator decided that if he killed the old man, he would not have to see the eye ever again.

Edgar Allan Poe is a peculiar author who wrote many short stories that made his readers question his sanity. One of his stories being “The Tell Tale Heart” about a man whose obsessions make him kill another man. The story is told in first person as it deals with a man’s mental state and his and his fall into madness. The protagonist is the one telling his own story about his obsession with the old man’s eye. The man for eight consecutive nights stands in the doorway of the old man’s chamber patiently waiting to commit what he thought was the only way to relieve him of his obsession. The man than proceeded to murder the old man and cover it up as best as he could. However, he was driven mad by the heartbeat of the old man and confessed his actions

Obsession with murder can lead an unwary victim to an untimely death. The narrator from Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Telltale Heart” insists he remains sane but cannot restrain himself from the inevitable. The narrator becomes bothered, obsessed and fascinated with the old man’s vulture-like eye. One night the narrator pounced on the old man, through him on the floor, and suffocated him with the mattress. The narrator chopped up the body and hid the pieces under three floor boards in his room. The narrator invited the police in and talked for a while. The narrator sat on a chair above the floor boards filled the corpse. The narrator recalled old man’s eye in his mind as it started to bother him so much he screamed out in agony, ripping up the

The narrator is trying to kill an old man because of this man’s evil, vulture-like eye. The narrator constantly thinks about this eye and obsesses over it on a consistent basis, so much so that “every night, about midnight, I turned to latch of his door and opened it…” (Poe, P3). His mind would constantly be on the eye, always thinking about the eye, and figuring out how to get rid of it. Poe would present this idea through timing and pacing mostly, as it drives the central idea by showing how detailed the narrator was about the actions he committed.

As a reader, you are presently made aware this man is mad. Poe also uses foreshadowing to create fear when the narrator says; “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” (Poe 303). This demonstrates how we know to be aware that his end goal is to kill the unsuspecting old man, creating

Have you ever done something and wasn’t sure why you did it? Or have you ever tried to convince yourself and others that you weren’t in the wrong for doing something bad? Well, the narrator in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" does. Edgar Allan Poe is known to write stories that are of Dark Romanticism. Dark romanticism is a literary genre that showcases gothic stories that portray torture, insanity, murder, and revenge. The story “The Tell-Tale Heart” is no different. Edgar Allan Poe does a great job with making the readers wonder throughout this short story. This allegory makes reader’s questions the narrator motives. Wondering, why he wants to kill the old man? What’s taking him so long to kill the old man? What happens if the old man never opens his ‘Evil Eye?’ Will he get away with murder? And Lastly, Is the narrator really insane? Though this is a short story, Poe shows why “The Tell-Tale Heart” meets the criteria for a good story. The theme, plot, story structure, characters, setting and style are all self-evident.

While analyzing the old man’s eye, having a look at the quote “pale blue, with a film over it” (Poe 2), it helps to relate the connection between the eye and the narrators actions. The eye of the old man prevents him to see clearly i.e. somewhat blurry vision. ‘The Tell Tale Heart” is told by the narrator’s perspective, which has to be accounted for when opinions on the events come to discussion. However, the narrator believes that his actions of murdering the old man is based on the horrific vulture eye that the old man possesses. This connects back to the old man having blurry vision.

In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Edgar Allan Poe shows the hidden darkness within an insane narrator. The narrator says “TRUE!—NERVOUS—VERY, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”(Poe). The narrator believes that he is nervous, but not mad. He says that he likes the old man, but he does not like the old man’s vulture looking eye, and he gets mad when he sees it. All he wants to do is get rid of the old man’s eyes. The only way the narrator thinks he can get rid of the old man’s vulture looking eyes is by killing him. He admits that he did not want to kill the old man, but he does not see any other way to get rid of them; so he chooses to kill the old man. The narrator thinks that his killing of the old man defines how perfect and cautious he is, but a sane person would have never killed the old man in order to escape his vulture looking eyes.

First, in "The-Tale Heart" one of the details that Poe gives to the reader is that the protagonist is narrating his tale from a cell in prison, this being after he had murdered a man whom he used to live with. The narrator lets the reader know that he does not have any remote idea of why he would want to kill that innocent old man, because as he says that poor man had never harmed him or done anything against him, but the complete opposite he had loved him and was not engrossed by his money. The narrator gives details to help the reader picture this man, he describes him as; the old man, responsible but also the man with the particular eye "vulture eye" colored blue and with a rare film over it (691). This being a symbol of what this meant

the narrator to the brink of insanity; in which that he must get rid of it. He tells us, it is the eye, that he loves the old man, but the eye in which torments him so, must go! In the story, the narrator goes on to say “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! 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; and so by degree—I make up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (Poe). Here is when the theme of revenge comes into play. He watches the man for several nights plotting and scheming to wait for the perfect time to kill the old man. After the eighth night, he mistakenly alerts the old man of his presence, forcing him to enact his ploy of revenge by murdering him. To hide the evidence, he then proceeds to chop up the body and hide in under the floorboards. With the deed done, the narrator feels relief until the doorbell rings, at the door cops stand waiting to investigate a scream heard, after explaining the noise as his own from a dream, they then sit down and chat further. Again, we know the revenge taken was due to the ‘evil-eye’ and not because of the old man, guilt starts to flood the narrator’s conscious and paranoia sets in. Jennifer Bouchard’s article “Literary Contexts in Short Stories: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tall-Tale Heart’”, confirms yet again the narrators revenge on the eye of the old man, and how his murder began to affect his sanity. She goes on to

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of Poe’s most read stories that portray guilt. All of the events in the story happen because the old man makes the narrator nervous. He believes the old man’s blue eye is evil, hence the name “the evil eye”. Throughout the story, Poe shows the narrator getting more anxious as he begins talking to himself saying “if you still think I’m mad”. As time goes by in the story the narrator initiates his own breakdown. By the time the police are about to leave, he is ready to confess as he thinks to himself “I gasped for breath. I talked more quickly. I argued with the officers about little things. Why won 't they just leave?” (Poe, Tell-Tale). This is when the narrator loses himself and cannot deal with the guilt any longer because he believes the officers are already aware of his crime. The heartbeat of the old man bugs the narrator like a woodpecker picking at him. Then he confesses due to the extra anxiety he was causing himself to feel.