Tell Tale Heart
In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, it focuses on a disturbed man who has an intense infatuation with his elderly neighbor’s “vulture eye”. The madman or the narrator says that the eye is evil and states several times that it needs to be terminated. The story builds up to the climax point where the madman snaps and kills his elderly neighbor. Throughout the tale, the man expresses to the audience that he is not mad at all, that his actions are justifiable. The man starts off by saying, “Why will you say that I am mad?” (41). This is one of the first few sentences in the story, which makes this sentence very significant. It caused the reader to already question the sanity of the narrator and truly ask themselves, “is this
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Also, he mentions on page 43, “If still, you think me mad, you will think so no longer.” The narrator is telling the voices in his head that he is not mad and that several little things out of his control drove him to murder. For example, the vulture eye of the old man, the narrator felt that the eye was evil and out to get him. The eye represented death and the narrator seems to have a strange relationship will death. There is no back story on the narrator so one must infer based off of the text that he has a fear of death. Whenever the old man’s eye made contact with him, the narrator says that his “blood ran cold; and so by degrees, very gradually” (41) and in death a human’s skin and blood turns cold. The narrator’s feelings towards death drove him to madness. He thought the only way to escape death was to kill the man to rid himself of the eye. The narrator’s relationship with dead and the disease that he mentions in the first few sentences come together and causes him to suffer from paranoia. For example, he believes that an eye is out to get him “it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (42). The old man nor his eye has never done anything malice towards him, it was all in his head. His paranoia manifested itself into voices in his head. These voices led him to commit murder and thus turn himself into
Also, he mentions on page 43, “If still, you think me mad, you will think so no longer.” The narrator is telling the voices in his head that he is not mad and that several little things out of his control drove him to murder. For example, the vulture eye of the old man, the narrator felt that the eye was evil and out to get him. The eye represented death and the narrator seems to have a strange relationship will death. There is no back story on the narrator so one must infer based off of the text that he has a fear of death. Whenever the old man’s eye made contact with him, the narrator says that his “blood ran cold; and so by degrees, very gradually” (41) and in death a human’s skin and blood turns cold. The narrator’s feelings towards death drove him to madness. He thought the only way to escape death was to kill the man to rid himself of the eye. The narrator’s relationship with dead and the disease that he mentions in the first few sentences come together and causes him to suffer from paranoia. For example, he believes that an eye is out to get him “it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (42). The old man nor his eye has never done anything malice towards him, it was all in his head. His paranoia manifested itself into voices in his head. These voices led him to commit murder and thus turn himself into