Madness In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

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The feeling of guilt can weigh over a person’s head until it consumes them to the point of madness. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, exemplifies this ideology as he conveys the concepts of internal insanity and the repercussions you face if you act upon those thoughts. The narrator explains early on his nervousness and how all of his senses are heightened, especially his hearing, due to a “disease.” This “disease” is the primary reason for the main conflict that occurs throughout the story, where this old man’s eye disturbs him so excessively that he wants to kill him to be rid of it. Poe’s purpose is to show that no matter what you do, your guilt will cause you to confess and take responsibility for your actions. Two symbols …show more content…

He recounts wanting to kill the old man who he was living with and notes that he was intimidated by the man’s “vulture eye.” One night, the narrator creeps into old man’s bedroom with the intent to kill him and be rid of his eye. What he does is he removes him from his bed and drags the bed over his body to kill him. After doing this, he proceeds to cut him into pieces and buries the bits of his body under the floorboards. When the police come to question him and investigate the crime, he is haunted by the sound of the old man’s heart, giving him the impression that the heart is still beating beneath the floorboards. With this in mind, it drives him to the point of insanity, which he would probably deny, as he confesses and tells the police where to find the …show more content…

The narrator goes against everything that the bedroom represents by taking advantage of the vulnerability of the old man while in the comatose state. Quite obviously, we are most vulnerable in bed asleep, considering we’re temporarily unconscious and we sleep well when we feel safe in our bedrooms. Interestingly enough, Poe turns the symbol of the security of being in bed on its head. The narrator uses the bed as weapon to catch the old man off guard and act when he least expects it, especially since he had been nice to the old man following up to his murder. And since the bed is the murder weapon, it 's an intriguing concept that Poe chose to use the bedroom as the place of monetary burial as

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