The Effects of a Guilty Conscience in “The Tell-Tale Heart”
“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story that describes the narrator’s plan to murder his master. The narrator is an insane person who narrates how he managed to kill his master, an old man, and how he eventually got caught. He is also paranoid and anxious, which makes him unreliable. In the narration, we find out that the narrator is the one who got himself captured. He manages to cover all his tracks and even convinces the police that nothing is wrong. However, he believed they have noticed, and a disturbing sound keeps ringing in his mind makes him tell them about his crime. Edgar Allan Poe uses the narration in the story to show the effects of a guilty conscience on a person. Guilt drives the narrator mad, makes him get caught, and leaves him with a heavy burden.
A guilty conscience has the power to do many things on a person’s mind, and to the narrator, it drives him mad. At the beginning of the story, the narrator confirms this status by showing that the people think that he is insane. For instance, as the narrator gets ready to kill the old man, he states, “and now have, I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?. I have told you that I am nervous: so I am” (Poe 768-769). He claims only to be anxious and nervous, but through the tale, we can indeed see that he is crazy. His craziness, however, can be credited to his guilty conscience. The onslaught of his madness only came after he had killed the old man. It is then that he starts hearing a sharp noise and feeling anxious. The narrator has no problem killing his master, but after killing him, it is when he starts questioning himself. He even refers to the old man as a good person indicating how guilt, even in our ordinary lives, can stick to our conscience. The ringing sound in his head could be the striking questions we ask ourselves when we feel like we have wronged someone.
A guilty conscience is also what makes the narrator to get caught. He had cleverly hidden all indicators to his murder. His alibi checks out, and when the police come to his home, he manages to convince them that his master had traveled. However, unprovoked, he confesses to the murder of his master because he believed that the police already knew of his intentions to kill, and they were mocking him before arresting him. The narrator declares, “[…] –they knew! –they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this, I think.” (Poe 197).Moreover, the sharp noise in his head causes him too much unrest that he feels that he must confess to his high crime. It is as if he practically wants to be caught, hoping it helps him escape the torture of the ‘noises in his head,’presumably guilt. The guilt drives him to a corner to confess.
Guilt gives the narrator a heavy burden, which became unbearable. The burden of his guilt is too strong that he doesn’t even make it through the night before it takes its toll. From his point of narration, it is evident that even after his capture, he has a burden on his soul. “[…] very dreadfully nervous I had been and am” (Poe et al. 537).The narrator’s conscience is in the wrong place, and he even questions his intention for murder. Although he felt peaceful after killing his master and cleaning up every spot of evidence, after a while, he feels uneasy. “[…] I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased.” (Poe 84) His guilt could not let him be at peace anymore.
The narrator feels that he needed to kill the old man. He was enraged by his “vulture eyes.” He is very disgusted by the gaze the old man gives him. It seems that the gaze that the boss gave him made him fearful of the boss. For instance, the narrator declares, “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 767). In his conscience at that moment, he had to kill his boss. He reveals that he loved the old man, having never been insulted by him, been wronged by him, and he did not have any desire for his gold. He only wants to get rid of the old man’s blue-like vulture gaze.
Once he made up his mind, he felt like there was no turning back. He makes a plan of how he would secretly carry out the murder against the old man and cover his tracks. For instance, the narrator states, “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it – oh, so gently!. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust [my head] in” (Poe 767). The narrator states how the readers would even laugh beside him while intruding and plotting the murder indicating the narrator’s goal of committing the crime. The narrator was also very cautious and stealthy in executing his whole plan. He acts more kindly to the old man on the week in which he kills him so that he may not suspect a thing For eight nights, the narrator did something to test and contribute to his murder plan. He makes the plan full proof, in a manner in which he cannot get caught, only for his conscience to catch up.
The same effects of a guilty conscience can take part in our lives. They may not be as grave, but they surely can come close. The narrator had no legitimate reason to kill his master, and it drove him crazy. The narrator is driven mad, confesses to his crime, and carries a heavy burden. Poe also shows us that owning up to the mistakes we have made maybe the best resolve. Though it may not fully reserve us from our guilt, it may feel much better. A guilty conscience can be adverse and lead to a severe mental breakdown. Guilt is a bad feeling, and the only solution is to refrain from doing wrong to the people who do not deserve it.
Works Cited
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Poe, Edgar A, Stuart Levine, and Susan F. Levine. The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Print.
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Poe, Edgar A, Andrew Barger, Harry Clarke, and Gustave Doré. Edgar Allan Poe: Annotated and Illustrated: Entire Stories and Poems. Memphis, Tenn.: BottleTree Books, 2008. Print.
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