Tell Tale Heart analysis
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe deals with a man's mental deterioration and his descent into madness. The story focuses on the narrator and his obsessions. It is told from a first person point of view by the protagonist himself. The point of view of the story is important because the reader only has one side of the story to work with. Therefore, the reader only knows what the narrator thinks and sees. This complicates things in deciding why the narrator goes insane. However, the narrator does reveal his insanity, and he reveals it through his obsessions. The narrator's obsessions include; his obsessions with his own sanity, the old man's evil eye, and the old man's beating heart. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story about a man, in this case the narrator, who for eight consecutive nights goes to the bedroom of another man. He stands at the door watching the man sleep with a single ray of light pointing directly at the sleeping man's eye, an evil eye according to the narrator. On the eighth night, the man is sitting up in bed with his eye open, and the narrator, consumed by the "evil eye" and the sound of the man's beating heart races into the room and kills the man in his bed. After the murder, the narrator disme
The narrator also has an unusual obsession with the old man's eye. The idea of the "evil eye" carries on throughout the story, until finally the narrator snaps, and does something about it. It takes the narrator seven days of watching the man sleep to finally act upon his instincts. He finally catches a glance at the old man's eye on the eighth night, and he is so enraged by this that he is forced to kill him. This isn't exactly something that can be considered normal. It can't even be considered normal excluding the murder for that matter. For a person to be obsessed with something as simple as the color of an eye doesn't exactly fall into the category of someone who is "all there." On top of this, he had no real motive for committing the murder. He even states this at the beginning saying, "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!" It's almost as if the narrator, as he is retelling the story, attempts to make up a motive for the murder. This seems like something childish. The way the narrator says the above line, it almost seems as though he is trying to make his story better. Without a motive, his story might be considered dull, and the reader may lose interest. An "evil eye" livens the story up, and makes it more appealing to the reader. The way he expresses it however makes it sound as if the eye really wasn't his motive, and the only thing the narrator could remember about the old man was that the old man had "a pale blue eye, with a film over it." On the other hand, it is possible that the narrator really is obsessed with the old man's eye. It's possible that he is so consumed with the eye, that he feels that he has to do something about it, and that's why he murders the man. Regardless, the narrator can be considered insane as a result of both. On the one hand, if the evil eye wasn't his motive, then he
Some common words found in the essay are:
Yes It's, Tell-Tale Heart, Allen Poe, evil eye, beating heart, man's eye, man's beating heart, insane narrator, man's beating, louder louder, narrator goes, hand evil eye, story reader, considered insane, eye wasn't motive, hand evil,
Approximate Word count = 1306
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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