The Tell-Tale Heart by Edger Allen 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.

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

The main conflict of the story is essentially the struggle of man versus man. The narrator sought out to only get rid of that horrible evil eye, but ends up killing a beloved friend of his. The only thing that conflicted him there was the beating of the heart. At first the narrator thinks that the heart is the old man’s, but soon comes to find out that the heart is that of his own. The narrator is so set on the fact that he is perfectly sane that the question of “how is it humanly possible to hear the heart of another person?” is totally thrown out of the window. Not only saying something about the narrator’s sanity, but also the guiltiness associated with the heart beat after the old man is dead.

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

It can show fantasy, darkness and it is possible that the old man in the story never existed. It is the capacity of the narrator’s imagination which makes him creates the old man. It all seems that nothing that he says happens in real life. For instance, the old man eyes, heartbeat, the night, the police, and so on, are all fruits of his fantasy. The eyes could represent his psychological sin and guilt, and the old man depicts his own personality. He wants to get rid of the eyes because it has a darkness sin which does not allow him to have a good sanity. The narrator separates the old man’s personality to his eye, and in the end, he assumes by getting rid of the eyes he could still love the man and live in peace with his mental sanity. However, this strategy does not work out well and turned against him because does not only kill the eyes but also the old

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

First, the narrator says that the old man's cloudy eye is evil and that he is sane. As a

The old man’s eye symbolises the insignificant problems within a person or group. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,”

In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator wants to show the reader that he is not insane. As proof, he offers a story. In the story, the initial situation is the narrator’s decision to kill the old man so that the man’s “evil” eye will stop

The young man does love the old man that never did him wrong, but the eye of the old man that vulture eye was driving him mad. So late during the night he would go and spy on the old man while he was sleeping But, one night he had killed the old man thus getting rid of the old mans eye forever up until the police come and he goes nuts and tells the police where the body is to the old man. The story causes the suspense by the young man going so mad over this old mans eye that he calls “Vulture eye” and then later ends up killing the old man to rid himself of the eye forever. “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was! 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 degrees- very gradually- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” Edgar Allen Poe P.g. 89.The effect on the man is that eye is making him go mad, mad enough to kill the old man over just his eye. If the eye the cause of the man going mad was not here, maybe just maybe the man wouldn’t be mad crazy over the old man's eye and kill him. It proves my thesis on the suspense it gives you when you rid about this man who is going mad crazy enough to kill someone over an eye and the relationship between this man and old man no mater how the eye mad him

Rather it is the old man’s that is so unsettling. Any time the eye looked upon him his. It is that eye by which he is consumed and that eye that sends him into madness. It pushes him to wish to never have to look upon, or be looked upon by, that eye again. His solution, in what seems a rational choice to him, is to kill the old man. With a similar precision as the Montresor took in “The Cask of Amontillado”, the man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” has devoted himself to the perfect method to dispatch the old man.

So, to be free of the “evil” eye, the narrator plans to kill the old man. After he decides to kill him, the narrator goes to the old man’s room every night at midnight and shines a beam of light on his eye to see if it is open. Every night that the old man’s eye is shut, he can’t bear to kill him. But on the eighth night, the old man hears his door open and

One conflict present in the short story was the young man’s attempt to remove the old man’s eye without notice; “ 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.” It is decided that the narrator will kill

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.

The narrator clearly states that there is no logical reason fro him to kill the old man, but for some reason the narrator cannot think of anything but the man?s eye and says that it gave him the idea of murder. The chilling feeling that the eye gave him planted in him, the thought to kill the old man, and after thinking about it day and night, that is what brings the narrator to his mad state. He is so obsessed with it that he goes into