The Tell Tale Heart

When a person becomes fascinated with a certain object or thing, their attention is irresistibly drawn towards it. They become enticed and overly interested in the object, trying to study it more, in hopes of learning and gather more information from it. However, when this fascination violently preoccupies every second of our time then it is no longer just a captivating interest but now an obsession. When someone is obsessed with something they are devoted and completely infatuated with the idea of that object, becoming powerless to resist the temptation that the object compels over them. It becomes an aggressive fixation and in some cases they may even lose themselves or their own sanity in the process. This idea that obsession leads to insanity is furthermore explored in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” in which the narrator becomes so enthralled with the eye of his old neighbor, that when he kills his neighbor in attempts to get rid of the eye, he cannot keep himself together and reveals to the authorities his secret, which in turn can be assumed to result in the narrator’s own death. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” Poe uses great symbolism and a distinct style to reveal that obsession ultimately leads to insanity.
One major way that Poe gets the theme across is by using substantial amounts of symbolism all throughout the story. Poe lets the narrator reveal his unexplainable fixation over his neighbor’s eye by admitting, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. . . . I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that 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, a...

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...story, the narrator continues to repeat himself over and over, along with question why the reader should have any uncertainty about his psychological state. Additionally, the narrator continues to defend his sanity by telling the reader that he cannot be considered crazy because he was mindful and took caution in his actions: “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work!” (1). With Poe’s writing style and use of language he achieves an emotion of genuine doubt about the narrator’s true mental state. Moreover, Poe reveals the narrator’s fear of the “vulture eye” and his peculiar obsession with it until he is finally able to eliminate it.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allen. The Tell Tale Heart. N.p.: n.p., 1843. Print.