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.
Poe, Edgar A. “The Tell-Tale Heart”. American Literature: Volume One. Ed. William E. Cain. New York: Pearson, 2004. 809-813. Print
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.
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.
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.
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.
At the end of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe’s fascination with death is apparent when the narrator ruthlessly killed an old man with a disturbing eye, but felt so guilty that he confessed to the police. The narrator dismembered the old man’s body and hid them in the floor, confident that they were concealed. However, when the police came to investigate, the narrator heard a heart beating and began to crack under the pressure. Overcome with guilt, he confessed that he murdered him and pulled up the floorboards. The narrator exclaimed, “But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision!” (“Heart” 4). Although the narrator was calm and confident at first, the guilt he experienced drove him mad, causing...
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.
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" is a short story about how a murderer's conscience overtakes him and whether the narrator is insane or if he suffers from over acuteness of the senses. Poe suggests the narrator is insane by the narrator's claims of sanity, the narrator's actions bring out the narrative irony of the story, and the narrator is insane according to the definition of insanity as it applies to "The Tell Tale Heart".
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
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.
... insecurity and paranoia. By leading us through an intricate maze of guilt and denial, Poe raises questions about what differentiates guilt from remorse. The audience begins to wonder if the fixation with the old man’s eye is in fact a cause of the madness or a result of the narrator’s inability to cope with his evil thoughts and the subsequent guilt that such thoughts derive. “The tell-tale heart” takes us through an incredible journey of discovery. By exploring the intrinsic nature of guilt, Poe shows us that without remorse and acceptance of responsibility the only possible result is a never ending cycle of projection, blame and denial that lead to madness.
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.
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.
Does the narrator show weakness through this mental illness or is it a sophistical mind of a genius? This is the question that must be answered here. Throughout this discussion we will prove that the narrator is a man of a conscience mind and committed the crime of murder. Along with that we will expose Poe’s true significance of writing this short story, and how people were getting away with crime by justifying that they were insane.
The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man's eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed 'perfect'; crime. People tend to think that insane persons are beyond the normal realm of reason shared by those who are in their right mind. This is not so; guilt is an emotion shared by all humans. The most demented individuals are not above the feeling of guilt and the havoc it causes to the psyche. Poe's use of setting, character, and language reveal that even an insane person feels guilt. Therein lies the theme to The Tell Tale Heart: The emotion of guilt easily, if not eventually, crashes through the seemingly unbreakable walls of insanity.