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. Poe also being the narrator gave the narrator a very dark vibe to him as he does in all of his short stories. Since Poe had no problem with the older man described in the story, other than the fact that the old man had …show more content…
Right as he finished his clean up it was around four in the morning, and there was a doorbell. Yet, the narrator did not seem to be scared or torn up in away, he was confident in the way he rid of the body. It was the police at the door, the neighbors hear a yell they explained. Quickly thinking he said that it was he who screamed because he had a nightmare. I don’t know about you but if a police officer asked any normal person a question like that after they killed a person, most people could not quick think that. Even when they asked where the old man was, he quickly explained that the older man was out of the country, and was unsure of when he would be back. How does one person think of that just right off the top of their head. They don’t. The police decided to continue to ask questions to the narrator which he was fine with, until he heart the hear. He heard the heart beating. The officers did not hear the beating though. So this causes the narrator to look more mad, but in the first sentence of the story he explains about a disease that caused his senses to be more acute. He heard the beating, which cause him to go crazy, he couldn’t bear to keep hearing the beating continue. He claims himself to be “too calm to be a madman”, but that makes you rethink that statement when he goes crazy about the heart beating. The …show more content…
This causes you to go into a story already giving the impression that he is mad. I believe that the narrators insightful insane desire to kill the man was impulsive because of the “disease”. Now weather or not if he had a disease he continues to say he isn’t mad. That obviously tells the reader that he is mad, just will not come to the conclusion that he is. When he finally yells, and fesses up the crime that he committed in the final sentence of the story, I think he finally realizes that something was honestly wrong with him. Poe like to give his reader a paranoia and or mental deterioration to keep interest and with this short story I think he portrayed both. The strange thing about this rivalry between the narrator and the old man is that it not hateful. The narrator seems to have a lot of sympathy for the old man. In fact, he knows exactly hoe scared the old man is, having felt the same way before. Yet the narrator can’t take how the old man’s eye made him feel. The narrator also seems to think that a person could only be insanely mad if they aren’t methodical, but his methodical efforts to kill an old man because he doesn’t like the eye is what I would call crazy, insane, or mad. The fact that he needed to see the eye to commit the crime made him seen madder than I thought in the beginning. In the end the narrator turns himself in, and I believe that he is mad for everything that he did.
Rather than believing himself to be a murder the narrator sees himself as someone who is defending others against the evil eye, and not the old man. His disease has allowed the narrator to see them as two separate entities (Dern58). According to the narrator he is sane as he is able to communicate his story with the listener and that is what the narrator believes restores his humanity (Dern
Upon reading a little bit into the story the reader finds that the narrator likes the old man or rather doesn’t having anything against him, except for his eye. The pale blue eye was the focus point for his rage he hates but not the old man. How can anyone just hate someone’s eye without being mentally unstable? “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture – a...
Moreover, the diction of the narrator and his repeated pleas to the reader to believe this thought, while not truly convincing, serve as a means to support his case. He asks, ”How, then, am I mad?” and “but why will you say that I am mad?” Beyond what could be considered a maniacal monologue, the narrator’s creepy fascination with the old man’s eye further distinguishes mental illness. What is described as “a pale blue eye, with a film over it” is, in all probability, a cataract, which is not nearly as evil as
Many of Poe’s stories and poems can be tied to events that have happened in his life. A lot of the hard times that he had had gone through in his life he used as motivation to write his poems and stories. For example the story “The Masque of the Red Death” is thought of to be related to the consumption (aka tuberculosis), which took the life of many of the women he loved. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the dying old man good be seen as Poe’s adoptive father on his death bed, and how the old mans eye made the murderer uncomfortable could be an analogy for how Poe’s father made him feel uncomfortable because he knew that his father did not love him.
The Narrator has a manner of speaking that is repetitive. For instance on page 523, “but why will you say that I am mad?” and “You fancy me mad.” He continues to repeat this throughout the story. As the story progresses, the desperation in The Narrator begins to eat at him, wearing away at his cool exterior. On page 523, “Madmen know nothing,” and then providing more and more examples to prove his cleverness. The Narrator is so set on convincing us that he is not insane, but what is the reason behind all of his defenses? The reason is simple. The Narrator associates being insane with having low intelligence and clings to what he believes is “sanity” because he is afraid to admit or even consider otherwise.
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 Tell-Tale Heart" consists of a monologue in which the murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt: "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing about this. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded. . . " i.e. a. By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is indeed deranged.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the storyteller tries to convince the reader that he is not mad. At the very beginning of the story, he asks, "...why will you say I am mad?" When the storyteller tells his story, it's obvious why. He attempts to tell his story in a calm manner, but occasionally jumps into a frenzied rant. Poe's story demonstrates an inner conflict; the state of madness and emotional break-down that the subconscious can inflict upon one's self.
"True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? 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 heavens and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" "...Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me.” As you can see this man is clearly mad, because this story is told in the first person it helps you understand the character even better, because we are seeing what exactly is happening to him moment by moment. It helps us understand what is going on in his head because we are getting to know him through out the story.
How can we justify a man is mad or not? A man may talk like a wise man, and yet act like a mad man. In Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator depicted a story that he killed the old man because of the old man’s so-call "evil eye" which made his blood run cold. Althought the narrator tried to persuade the reader that he was normal, several pieces of evidence of confusing illusion and reality adequately indicates his madness and absurdity. By examining his behaviour and mind, I will expound his madness thoroughly.
...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.
Is the narrator of “The Tell Tale Heart” sane or insane? “Sanity: a sound of mind; not mad or mentally ill (Webster Dictionary pg. 862).” In the short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” the narrator tries to convince the audience that he is sane; he says “... but why will you say that I am mad (Poe pg. 202).” I believe that the narrator is sane. He tries to prove that he is sane throughout the entire short story that he is not mad. For example, he was very wary during the seven days that he stalked the old man, he felt an intense amount of guilt, and that he made this brilliant plan of murder.
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.
The narrator continues to insist that he is not mad by explaining how cunningly he proceeds in his quest to kill the old man. He presents, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded” (Poe 619), as the argument for his sanity. His argument could be seen as though the murder was premeditated, but according to psychiatrist Dr. Felthous, “Some deluded
As the story begins the narrator tries to convince the reader that he is not insane. This goes on throughout the story. He says he suffers from over-acuteness. “And have I not told you that what you mist...