Essay on The Tell-Tale Heart - 852 Words

Andrew Fiddler Professor Esquivel English 1020 15 February 2013 Themes of â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† Edgar Allen Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories, especially â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart.† In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart,† the narrator confesses a love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers the body and hides the pieces below the floorboards in the bedroom. When the police arrive, the narrator appears normal and unshaken by the murder. Later on, the man gives in to the guilt and cannot withstand knowing anymore and not telling anyone. The narrator reveals his madness by attempting to separate the person of the old man, whom he loves, from the old man’s supposedly evil eye, which triggers the narrator’s†¦show more content†¦The narrator reveals his inability to recognize that the â€Å"eye† is the â€Å"I,† or identity, of the old man. The eyes symbolize the essence of human identity, which cannot be separated from the body. The eye cannot be kill ed without causing the man to die. According to the narrator, â€Å"For it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.† (Poe), the eye not the old man haunted him and had to be eliminated. Characterization also helps the reader understand the theme. I think that the narrator is unnamed to give the reader another sense that this whole story could happen to them, or anyone they know. It shows the theme that everyone has an evil side, and although it is hard to admit, all humans are capable of committing a murder such as this. But just like everyone is capable of committing this kind of crime, everyone also feels the guilt after the deed is done. As the story goes on, the readers can see the madness growing in the narrator. At first, he tells the story quite calmly. He even explains that after the murder, he was completely calm with the police officers. The narrator then states â€Å"The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them.† (Poe), thinking he could get by with the murder but he could not stand the guilt that came along with it. By the end of the story when he hears the heartbeat, his whole mannerism changes. He is stressed and his words and thoughts come out in a panicked tone. Interestingly, there is only one set of spoken words that theShow MoreRelatedThe Tale the Heart Tells523 Words   |  2 PagesMany a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him although I chuckled at heart† (Poe 2). The narrator sees the man as his double through such an emphasis on their similar features, which later becomes crucial as the narrator feels the need for the displacement of his fear. The fact that the old man’s fear is warranted due toRead MoreEssay on The Tell Tale Heart655 Words   |  3 PagesThe Insane Killer One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most terrifying tales is â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart†. Poe’s life was tragic because many of the women that Edgar Allan Poe loved very much had died of tuberculosis- his mother, his foster mother, his wife Virginia, and the men in his life kept abandoning him, so that made him dark and depressed. That darkness shows in a lot of his stories, including this one. â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† is a story about a murder the narrator commits. He kills an old man becauseRead MoreThe Tell Tale Heart Essay1015 Words   |  5 PagesBeating Heart With a descriptive epistle of murder and insanity, â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† threw itself into history as a classic. The narrator tells of his plot to murder an old man with a â€Å"vulture eye.† Although he sneaks into his bedroom, night after night, he still cannot murder the old man, because he loves the man, but hates the eye. When seeing the vulture eye on the eighth night, he murders the old man and dismembers his body. While insisting upon his sanity he hears the old man’s heart beatingRead MoreTell Tale Heart Essay1367 Words   |  6 PagesIn â€Å"Tell Tale Heart,† Edgar Allen Poe develops the plot and creates a mood through the use of metaphors, symbolism, imagery, and foreshadowing. The unique use of said literary devices enables the story to strongly entice the reader’s interest and spark high levels of curiosity. The vivid mental pieces of art are beautifully painted with metaphors, symbolism, and imagery, the tools mastered by the p ainter, Edgar Allen Poe. The initial analysis will be that of the old man’s eye. Mr. Poe uses veryRead More A Hanging and A Tell-Tale Heart1541 Words   |  7 Pagescharacters of the guard from George Orwell’s â€Å"A Hanging† and the servant from Edgar Allen Poe’s â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart†, they both experience the act of taking another person’s life. The guard from â€Å"A Hanging† works at a prison in Burma where felons await execution. His job is to lead the convicted men to their doom and makes sure everything goes routinely and swift. While the servant from â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart† is a psychopathic man who lets his obsession over his boss’s glasseye lead him to plot and carryRead More The Tell Tale Heart Essay1656 Words   |  7 PagesIn the â€Å"Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is extremely uncanny due to the reader’s inability to trust him. Right from the beggining the reader can tell that the narrator is crazy although the narrator does proclaim that he is sane. Since a person cannot trust a crazy person, the narrator himself is unreliable and therefore uncanny. Also as the story progress the narrator falls deeper and deeper into lunacy making him more and more unreliable, until the end of the story where the narratorRead MoreAnalysis Of The Tell Tale Heart 1110 Words   |  5 Pagesdespicable villains are marked with indifference towards their moral reprehensibility. â€Å"In the Penal Colony† and â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† both elucidate the idea that corruption, darkness, and immorality alike are unperceivable to the one afflicted. However, while â€Å"In the Penal Colony† suggests that this blind nature is a result of dutiful honor, responsibility, and hope, â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† alternatively submits that it is a result of the possibility of fulfillment. Distinction between bothRead MoreThe Tell-Tale Heart Confession593 Words   |  2 PagesProbably not, but most americans have had this issue in that past. The narrator in â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† had the same exact same problem during his span as a butler. â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† is a short story composed about a butler that murders his master because he didn’t liked the way his master’s eye looked when it was open. The meaning of the title â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart†, means that every heart has a tale to tell. At the ending of the story the narrator openly admits that he killed his master to policeRead MoreThe Black Cat And The Tell Tale Heart957 Words   |  4 Pages the manner in which he expressed these emotions was his brilliantly horrifying short stories. In the two short stories â€Å"The Black Cat† and â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† Poe uses characterization to portray the guilt of the narrator. â€Å"The Black Ca t† short story’s writing has a morbid effect on readers and describes the torments of guilt. In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† Poe explores the effects of the subconscious mind, the suppressing of guilt and the narrator’s guilt forcing him to confess.† â€Å"The Black Cat† isRead MoreThe Tell Tale Heart And The Black Cat1612 Words   |  7 Pagessome differences in his works. In two of his works, â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† and â€Å"The Black Cat†, he uses the fatalities of his mother and wife to write two great stories. Although â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† and â€Å"The Black Cat† by Edgar Allen Poe seem similar on the surface because of the happiness in the beginning of the stories and the murders by the end, whereas they both represent the pain Poe dealt with in their own way. In both â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† and â€Å"The Black Cat†, both main characters murder innocent