The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

The tale begins with a dramatic declaration of a tortured mind: “very dreadful nervous I had been and am” (Poe 922). This vivid testimony immediately gives the reader insight into the narrator’s state of paranoia. Regardless of “how calmly” the narrator vows he can recount his story, his words foreshadow the crime he commits (Poe 922). He is mentally imbalanced and has committed a murder without rational motive. In “Ego-Evil and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’”, Magdalen Wing-chi Ki says the narrator’s mind is “utterly corrupt at its root” because he is “immune to the notion of right or wrong” (Wing-chi Ki 29).

"Poe, Edgar Allan”. Academic World Book. World Book, 2014. Web. 6 May, 2014.

A Redeemed Childhood Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Baltimore, Maryland to two young actors named Eliza Arnold Hopkins and David Poe. When Poe was nearly three years old, his mother died from tuberculosis. This had a profound effect on the young Poe, who "always remembered -more or less unconsciously - his mother vomiting blood and being carried away from him forever by sinister men in black," according to Roger Asselineau, professor of American literature at the Sorbonne, Paris. Within a number of days, David Poe, who was known to be an alcoholic, disappeared. Although he was never found, it is assumed that he ran off rather than died.

The story represents the insight world of a mad man. Although he claims to be completely sound while killing a person, the reasons of him doing so, and the way he chose to do it clearly state his mental instability. Old man’s evil eye is more of a symbol of the narrator’s madness, and it is represented through his unreasonable desire to get rid of a person he says he loves. The narrator needs to destroy the eye, not the person, because otherwise this eye will destroy him. The eye is a symbolic representation of the narrator’s madness.

Web. 20 Apr. 2014. Poe, Edgar Allan. "Annabel Lee."

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2014.

Psycho Murderer “True!-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe). On one gruesome night, an old man was brutally murdered. The murderer had planned out the act for several nights. In fact, the reason he killed the old man, he said, was because of his vulture eye. But, because he is a little insane, there is a debate out there on if he should be punished.

In “Overview: ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’” the author states “It immediately suggest the mental instability that the narrator will continue to deny through the remainder of the story. He insist that he carefully planned, stealthy manner in which he murdered the old man and dismembered and hid the corpse was to clever an accomplishment for an insane man” (Howes). It is clear that the narrator of the story is indeed, mad. Even though a person who has a mental issue (e.g. “mad”) may not have a strong enough conscience to feel guilt, the motive is both guilt and psychosis in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The narrator had no humane reason to kill a loved one, the guilt when the narrator murders the old man made his anxiety grow more so when the narrator planed the murder out.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved.

- It is the beating of his hideous heart!’”(Poe). Edgar Allan Poe, a brilliant writer and poet, is well known for his creation of the horror short story and mystery novel. He has written suspenseful short-stories such as “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” where in both stories it has the reader on edge till the very end. For example, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about the main character taking care of an older man and begins to despise the old man’s bad eye. In the end the main character kills the old man and places his body under the floor boards and ends up turning himself in due to his own insanity and hallucinations.