The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story that was written in the year 1843.  The story features a narrator who tries to justify his sanity after committing murder.  He starts by telling the audience that he is not mad; however, what he said later confirmed that he is indeed insane. He carefully planned the murder of an old man with the “vulture eye” and concealed beneath the floorboards (Poe, 2019). However, his guilt was later portrayed through his hallucinations. He was hallucinating that the old man’s heart was still beating where he hid him. As the story unfolds, the audience realized that his motivation to kill the old man was not materialistic, but rather his fear for the old man’s pale blue eye. This paper contains a detailed explanation of the various events connected to the motives and psychological impulsions that made the protagonist commit murder.

This is a story of paranoia that reflects the psychological contradictions in a murder story. This is proved in the story where the narrator tells the audience that he was nervous; however, he could not understand why she should be thought mad (Poe, 2019). He tries to prove to the audience that his reason for committing murder was not his madness. He convinces himself that his hypersensitivity was enough proof that he was sane. This can even be confusing to the audience because the narrator could not precisely tell his story in a precise and complete way if he was sane.  He convinces the audience that his special knowledge about the murder event was proof that he was not mad. However, the fact that the narrator unwittingly presents the story of the murder he committed shows that he could not be of sound mind.

The narrator’s capacity to show affection and hate created confusion on his reasons for murdering the story. He takes the audience through a psychological mystery on how people can love others, and sometimes the love can drive them to kill the loved ones or the people they need in life. The author explores this paradox in the story reflecting Sigmund Freud’s theories of the mind. From the story, the audience learns that the protagonist loved the old man and that he was not after his material possessions.  The narrators also make it clear his purpose for the murder was not to revenge. This part of the narrative eliminated all the common motives of crime in violent murder cases.  According to the narrator, his only reason for killing the old man was his vulture-eye (Poe, 2019). He even sites this reason when proclaiming his sanity in the story. He was obsessed with the color of the man’s eye. In this story, the author tries to portray the narrator as an innocent person by separating the old man with his vulture-eye. Consequently, this spares the protagonist the burden of being guilty. This part of the story triggers many questions regarding his sanity since the old man cannot be separated from his eye.

The narrator tries to prove that the identity of the old mad was separate from his eye, which he disliked. Even after killing the old man to get rid of the eye, he still insists that he loved the old man. From this, the audience gets to know that eradication of the man’s eye was a factor that motivated the narrator to commit murder (Poe, 2019). The fact that he does not concede that this act would end the man’s life also makes the audience to doubt his sanity.  This part of the story betrays the narrator, especially when he started having hallucinations. He thought that other parts of the old man’s body parts other than the eye were against him.  This further proves that his madness motivated him to kill the man.

The narrator’s sensitivity to sound after killing the old man further confirms his insanity in the story. It became difficult for him to tell the difference between real sounds and imagined ones. He became obsessed with the man imagined sounds of the old man’s heartbeat and, as such, concerned with other parts of the man’s body such as the heart. However, he was not concerned with destroying his eye. He is so obsessed with the imaginary heartbeat sounds that he forget the man’s screams, which could attract the attention of his neighbors. He is not even concerned the real sound of the screams could attract the police. In this story, police do not play their usually central role of ensuring there is order. They are not portrayed as agents of authority. By doing this, Poe wanted to weaken the external forms of powers. Consequently, the internal power of the mind plays a dominant role in revealing the narrator’s guilt. For instance, his inability to have peace of mind after killing the old man forced him to give himself way (Poe, 2019). The role of the police in the scene was to provide the protagonist with a platform to confess his participation in the old man’s murder.  He confuses his heartbeat with the heartbeat of the mean he killed. This forced him to confess his crime to the police.  He had started lying that the man was out of town and that the screams they had were his. However, haunted his guilt, he had to confess. This part of the story also proves that the narrator was not in his right mind. He addressed the police just like other civilians. This shows his inability to take tell the difference between his own imaginations and the real police identity. He even mistakes his hallucinations with a sharp hearing. According to him, his sharp hearing made it possible for him to hear things in heaven, hell, and earth.

The events in the story also tell that the narrator’s psychological problems motivated his act of committing murder. For instance, he visited the old man’s house for seven days just to find him open his eyes. Every day at midnight, he went to the man’s bedroom to monitor his eyes. A sane person cannot do this. The seven nights, he could not kill the old man because he did not open his eyes. However, on the eighth night, he found the eye open, and as such, he killed him.  He started by throwing the latent on his vulture-eye and later dragged him out of his bed without caring about his shrieks. Under normal circumstances, people kill others for revenge or to get something they possess. However, his motive for killing the man and his procedures for executing his plan is a clear indication that he is not reasonable (Poe, 2019).

The story reveals that humans have an evil side, which motivates them to engage in sinful acts. It is that side of humans that drove the narrator to commit the crime. The evil side instigates humans to evil without specific reasons. This is evident in the part of the story where the narrator tells the audience that he had committed a murder that made no sense to himself (Poe, 2019).  This implies that, at times, people engage in evil acts against their wishes. The narrator’s tome reveals that he regrets killing the old man and that he had no reason to kill him. The vulture-eye was not enough to justify killing the man.

Conclusively, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written with the aim of studying paranoia and mental problems. The story focuses on the narrator’s obsessions, which were the old man’s eyes, heartbeat, and his proof of sanity. Through the obsessions, the story highlights the psychological contradictions that motivated the protagonist to kill the old man. His obsession for claiming that he was sane and his reasons for killing the old man confirmed the narrator’s insanity. He also claims to love the man, yet he killed him. This is according to Freud’s theory, can be true. The theory explains how people can love and still intentionally hurt them. The narrators’ hallucinations also prove that he had a mental illness that motivated him to commit the crime. His insanity made him unable to differentiate between real and imaginary sounds. The constant imaginary sounds of the old man’s heartbeat haunted him, forcing him to confess to the police about his hand in the old man’s murder.

Reference

Poe, E. (2019). The Tell-Tale Heart. Strelbytskyy Multimedia. New York, NY.