Poe has given his narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” multiple currently diagnosable psychological disorders: bipolarity, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychopathy, paranoia. Although he is a psychopath by Hare’s definition, among the disorders, the narrator’s sense of fear is overwhelmingly the most motivating. On a first reading, it might seem that the narrator committed murder because of his unjustified hatred towards the victim, or more specifically, the victim’s “evil eye.” And later, he confesses to his crime because of the overwhelming guilt he feels which causes him to hear the beating of the dead man’s heart. However, as a psychopath, the narrator is incapable of feeling guilt. I will demonstrate that it is not hatred toward what is outside of the self that drove the narrator to murder and confession but the hatred and the immense fear of the insane side of himself that drove him to such irrational actions.
After the burying the corpse beneath the floorboards, the narrator, being proud of his work, states that “no human eye – not even his – could have detected anything wrong.” To the narrator, the old man is able to see beyond what the average person can see. One might assume that it was the fear of the eye’s judgement that caused the narrator to resort to murder. Although this is true, a stronger motivation was the fear of his own insanity. The fact that he feared the eye made him see the irrational side of himself. In refusal to acknowledge his mental disorder, the narrator gives an alternative name to his paranoia, characterized by an oversensitivity to sound: “nervousness.” The phrase “I have nothing to fear” right after the murder as well as in the presence of the police is repeated because he’s trying to convince...
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... but the torment of being labelled insane. The eventual anxiety attack, characterized by irrational behaviour such speaking frequently, and later foaming, raving, swearing and violent actions towards his chair, which is, ironically, the typical behaviour of the insane.
Works Cited
Haycock, Dean. “Hare Psychopathy Checklist.” Healthonline. 2003. http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/hare-psychopathy-checklist/3
Jerga, Josh. “Accused Chainsaw Murderer Had 'Shark' Eyes.” News.smh. 11/15/2010. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/accused-chainsaw-murderer-had-shark -eyes-20101115-17u4c.html.
Merriam-Webster. 2010. http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/antisocial%20personality%20disorder
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell Tale Heart.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. vol. B. Ed. Baym, Nina. New York: Norton, 2007. Print.
This definition points to schizophrenic paranoia as the mental disorder of the narrator, and even possibly, Poe. This is further made apparent through symptoms which the narrator exhibits. The first symptom is delusion, which is that which may exists in the mind but does not exist in reality. The second symptom is catatonic behavior. The third symptom is hallucination, or the unreal sensory experience that occurs in the patient’s mind, which is made apparent through the auditory sense of the narrator. The narrator exaggerates evidences in the narrator deed are exaggerated. “And now a new anxiety seized me the sound would be heard by a neighbour!” – This is the quotation in the part where the narrator came into the old man’s room. He assured that he heard a strange sound considered as the heart beat of the old man and it was loud for him. He accused that the sound was too loud that even the neighbor might be able to hear it. He continues: “It grew louder - louder - louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! - no, no! They heard! - they suspected! - they knew! - they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think.” This is the part when the narrator and the police were having chat in the room. The narrator heard the
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator realizes that he absences a reason for killing the old man he lives with. He even starts to admit having to love the man. He states, “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye” (Poe 64). Psychosis is seen in the difficult rationality the narrator uses to defend his murder. The logic the narrator provides is that he thinks the desire to murder the old man results from the man’s eye, which bothers him. He says, “When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!” (Poe 65). The fact that by this man’s eye is what makes him very angry is such a irrelevant reason for the narrator to kill him. This proves that he is not mentally stable, anyone in their right state of mind would not want to commit such a crime due to an irritation of someone’s eye. This represents the idea that this narrator expresses his complete lack of sanity through the premeditation and planning he put into committing the murder. In the beginning of the story, he says “vulture eye” giving the impression that he is uncertain that the eye is the reason for the murder, he also says how he thinks it’s the eye, he uses past tense as opposed to declaring with certainty that this is why the killing of the man. This shows the contrast to how as a sane person would be sure that this is their reason for killing another person before committing.
The police show up at his door, with a neighbor’s claim of a loud noise heard. The man, overflowing with confidence, cheerfully allows the police to search the entire house, as he had previously dismembered the body and hidden it under the floorboards. Finding nothing, the police and him chat for a while in the old man’s room, when suddenly the man hears a faint beating. Quickly becoming louder, the man loses his cheerful disposition and starts to panic. He claims the police were toying with him; they knew all along. Claiming the noise emanated from the dead man’s heart, the man succumbs to the noise, yelling, “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe).
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Tell-Tale Heart." Skwire, David and Harvey S Wiener. Student's Book of College English: Rhetoric, Reader, Research Guide and Handbook. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012. 402-405. Print.
The behavior of the narrator in The Tell-Tale heart demonstrate characteristic that are associated with people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoid schizophrenia . When Poe wrote this story in 1843 obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia had not been discovered. However in modern times the characteristics demonstrated by the narrator leads people to believe that he has a mental illness. Poe’s narrator demonstrates classic signs throughout the story leading the reader to believe that this character is mad
E. Arthur Robinson feels that by using this irony the narrator creates a feeling of hysteria, and the turmoil resulting from this hysteria is what places "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the list of the greatest horror stories of all time (94). Julian Symons suggests that the murder of the old man is motiveless, and unconnected with passion or profit (212). But in a deeper sense, the murder does have a purpose: to ensure that the narrator does not have to endure the haunting of the Evil Eye any longer. To a madman, this is as good of a reason as any; in the mind of a madman, reason does not always win out over emotion. Edward H. Davidson insists that emotion had a large part to play in the crime, suggesting that the narrator suffers and commits a crime because of an excess of emotion over intelligence (203).
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator attempts to assert his sanity while describing a murder he carefully planned and executed. Despite his claims that he is not mad, it is very obvious that his actions are a result of his mental disorder. Hollie Pritchard writes in her article, “it has been suggested that it is not the idea but the form of his madness that is of importance to the story” (144). There is evidence in the text to support that the narrator suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was experiencing the active phase of said disease when the murder happened. The narrator’s actions in “The Tell-Tale Heart” are a result of him succumbing to his paranoid schizophrenia.
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
...arly shows that the narrator is insane because he heard noises, which could not possibly have occurred. As the police officers were sitting and talking in the old man's chamber, the narrator becomes paranoid that the officers suspect him of murder. The narrator says, "I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die". The narrator is deluded in thinking the officers knew of his crime because his insanity makes him paranoid.
In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a man opens up by saying that he will defend his sanity yet confessing that he has killed old man who he takes care of. The police show up and ask him if he knows anything about the screams the old man had made. He tells them no and they believe him. In the end he hears them talking and laughing and assumes that they are mocking him and know that he is lying. He ends up confessing his crime and telling them that the body of the old man is under the floorboards.
“The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.” University of Virginia, n.d. Web. 27 March, 2014.
The fixation on the old man's vulture-like eye forces the narrator to concoct a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" (34). The narrator begins his tale of betrayal by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly surmises the narrator indeed is out of control. The fact that the old man's eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must search for justification to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own unreasonable fear of the eye.
Let’s take a look at Exhibit A that proves that the narrator is not insane rather acting that way to get away from getting punished. “The Tell Tale Hea...
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.