In "The Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe uses a wide array of literary elements throughout to create a sense of bewilderment, rage and madness through the eyes of the narrator. Through the frequent use of interjection, along with short, choppy sentences, Poe creates a narrator that strikes the reader as mad and nervous, almost schizophrenic in nature. He employs this throughout the story, reinforcing the idea that the narrator is truly insane. Poe also uses some degree of personification and allusion, which is, perhaps, most vividly portrayed when he personifies the narrator as Death incarnate, saying,"Now he knew that Death was standing there." The narrator has taken it upon himself to do the job of Death itself, which highlights superstition of the time by also making an allusion to the entity of Death the character. Later on the narrator calls the white, milky eye of the old man the "Evil Eye". This is also an allusion to a belief at the time, of an eye or gaze that when it looks upon you; you are harmed. Now, the …show more content…
He goes about describing the murder very calmly, and almost as if he is proud of what he did. He states "I smiled as I felt success was near" as he beats the old man to death. He even rejoices when the deed is done, stating "He was dead!... his eye would trouble me no more!" When one considers the deed that was just done, the reader must feel equal parts disgust and horror. The narrator then meticulously describes the way he disposed of the body: "You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. First, I cut off the head, then the arms and the legs....and then I put the pieces of the body under the floorboards." For a reader of the time, this was written they would most likely have recoiled with shock and disgust, and this reaction comes down through the ages to even today's
In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase from the first paragraph, "The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story." This shows that we are in his thou...
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.
He acts nice for the next week, and goes in his room each night just waiting for the eye to open. On the eighth night the old man wakes up and the narrator kills him. After he stuffs the chopped up body of the old man under the floor boards. Then when the police came to his house because of a sound disturbance, he led them to where he killed the body and came clean saying that he killed the man. The narrator proves to be very unreliable, we should question everything he says.
The narrator’s guilty conscience drives him to admitting his crime to the police by uncovering the dismembered body in the resolution because all he could hear was the beating of a dead man’s heart inside his head. The conflicted narrator is so fearful of the old man’s “vulture” eye because it is unfamiliar to him that he carefully plans to murder the man, thus, rid him of the eye forever. Because he has such a strong hatred towards the eye, the narrator slaughters the elderly man in his sleep, but he soon regrets it because his guilty conscience overcomes him and he confesses everything to the authorities.
In the story 'The Tell-Tale Heart' Allan Poe has created a character which is interpreted as insane; a character who says that he is not crazy even though he is constantly convicting himself. A main character who frequently states "why will you say that I am mad?", however the more he talks the more the reader believes he is. Furthermore, the author built up a creepy main character. In the story the narrator plots to murder the old man.
He killed the old man by suffocating him with a mattress, cutting off his arms and legs in a tub so all the blood would be gone, then hiding the old man’s body parts under the floor. After exterminating the old man he smiled gaily about how well it went. He was so confident about the disposing of the body, when the police came he let the police look around a actually sat on the floorboards where the body was at. The narrator was ecstatic after the old man was dead, he thought he got away with killing the man, the narrator said, “his eye would trouble me no
The “Tell-Tale Heart” was one of many stories written by Edgar Allan Poe during a short period of time between 1840 to 1849. Most commonly, Edgar Allan Poe centered his writings around the idea of gothic literature. This is a style of writing encourages and employs elements of horror, death, and even romance. Furthermore, in the “Tell-Tale Heart,” Edgar Allen Poe focuses on the corrupt thoughts and actions of one unnamed narrator. Throughout the story, we find that the narrator persistently tries to convince the reader of his sanity, when in fact, his actions alone demonstrate the irony of his claims.
He had the eye 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” This quote show you that he hated the old man's eye and just the fact that it existed affected him. The young man ends up killing him in a effort to get rid of the eye but before he killed him, the old man screamed and alerted the
The Tell-Tale Heart , much like many of Edgar Allan Poe’s other works, is a dark and somber work of literature. The poem begins with the narrator trying to explain that he has not lost control of his mind. He explains that he has been ill, but that his illness has only made his senses and his mind stronger. The narrator then begins to tell his story to try to explain that he is not crazy. His story begins by him saying that he felt as if the old man’s eye was watching him.
Taylor McIntosh Ellen Shelton English 111 October 17, 2017 The Mad Man’s Story In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tale Tell Heart”, is about a man physically going mad. The short story is about the narrator revealing his insanity, how much an eye bothered him and the sound of an old mans beating heart. In the story the reader only knows that the narrator is thinking and seeing. Only being able to see one side of how the narrator goes mad, makes this very complicated in being able to depict if he is actually going insane.
Finally, he opens the little door of his lamp and allows a little light to shine onto the man, and it lands exactly on the eye. And it says, "at length, a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye." And then the eye is open. "It was open -- wide, wide open -- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it." So he's doesn't see the old man.
While he is looking at the old man outside his room he talks about planning on murdering the old man he also mentions how he cannot see his eye, so he is not driven with anger. One night, as soon as he is able to see the old man's eye he executes his plan to kill the men and that it is the only way he will be able to stop the evil in the old man's eye. "You think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precaution I tool for the concealment of the body," he believes that he is not mad because he is able to hide the body well and leave no trace behind. When he sits down with the police offices right above where he put the body he starts to hear the beating heart of the old man. This causes him to start thinking that everyone can hear the heart beat and he starts to believe the police officers are mocking his crime.
Through the first person narrator, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" illustrates how man's imagination is capable of being so vivid that it profoundly affects people's lives. The manifestation of the narrator's imagination unconsciously plants seeds in his mind, and those seeds grow into an unmanageable situation for which there is no room for reason and which culminates in murder. The narrator takes care of an old man with whom the relationship is unclear, although the narrator's comment of "For his gold I had no desire" (Poe 34) lends itself to the fact that the old man may be a family member whose death would monetarily benefit the narrator. Moreover, the narrator also intimates a caring relationship when he says, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (34). The narrator's obsession with the old man's eye culminates in his own undoing as he is engulfed with internal conflict and his own transformation from confidence to guilt.
The way he stored the body is stated in paragraph 12 and it says, “First I cut off the head, then the arms and legs. I was careful not to let a single drop of blood fall on the floor. I pulled up three of the boards that formed the floor, and put the pieces of the body there.” This shows that the narrator is insane, not only for killing the poor old man, but for also turning him into pieces just to cover his tracks.
Three elements of literary work that truly sum up the theme of The Tell Tale Heart are setting, character, and language. Through these elements we can easily see how guilt, an emotion, can be more powerful than insanity. Even the most demented criminal has feelings of guilt, if not remorse, for what he has done. This is shown exquisitely in Poe's writing. All three elements were used to their extreme to convey the theme. The balance of the elements is such that some flow into others. It is sometimes hard to distinguish one from another. Poe's usage of these elements shows his mastery not only over the pen, but over the mind as well.