Tell Tale Heart Guilt

Main characters are the narrator who is mentally ill and an old man who has a “vulture” eye. The narrator claims he loves the old man because the old man never did him an wrong.(Poe 1). However, the narrator is disturbed by the old man’s “vulture” eye. Then he ends up being obsessed with the old man’s “vulture” eye and wanting to get rid of it.(Poe 1) The narrator begins to hear a heartbeat (the old man’s heartbeat). This heartbeat leads the narrator to become more mad and ends up confessing his crime to the police.(Poe 5) In reality, “The Tell-Tale Heart” represents that guilt can cause people to confess their darkest crimes. The story suggests that if someone commits a crime, they must face the consequences no matter how mentally ill they are.
To begin, whether or not the narrator had a mental condition does not mean murder is an excusable crime; he still has to face the consequences for committing murder. In his point of view he is trying to cope with his mental condition but in reality he wasn’t.
Whenever he saw the old man’s eye it’s always vexing him.(Poe 1). Well before the narrator killed the old man he had mixed feelings about him. Number one, loved him because he never did him wrong and number two, he could not tolerate looking at his eye.(Poe 1). When he thought of killing the old man he thought the “ eye would stop troubling him. After he killed the old man, the “vulture” eye stopped troubling him. He hid the corpse under the bed.(Poe 3). Therefore the heartbeat was coming from the old man. As the police officers arrived on the scene the narrator wanted to cover up what he did wrong, but he starts to think if he should confess to the police that he killed the old man or lie.(Poe 4) As the heartbeat got louder, he confessed that he killed the old man. As the narrator confessed to the police it reveals that he learned his lesson and therefore he is guilty for committing murder.(Poe 5) After he confessed to the cops the heartbeat stopped making noise.(Poe 5). The narrator should be guilty for killing the old man because he committed murder and it is a crime. The narrator did more than murder, he also stalked the old man by sneaking in his room and watching him sleep.(Poe 2). Therefore narrator is a murderer and a stalker. The narrator’s choice of killing the old man he just was so obsessed over the old man’s eye which meant he thought it was okay to get rid of him.
The narrator is a very mentally ill and a paranoid person because he was not trying to cope with his mental condition. He just killed an old man just because of his eye.Therefore he must face the consequences. The techniques that Edgar Allan Poe used was mood changes to develop the theme like the part when the narrator confessed to the cops for killing the old man.
Some may argue that the narrator was a murderer.
While this may be true, it fails to account for the lesson readers learn from the narrator’s crime that the criminal must face the consequences no matter how mentally ill they are because when criminals learn their lesson they realize they’re guilty for what they have done. In addition to the narrator did the right thing by confessing to the police because he didn’t lie to the police and just because he confessed doesn’t mean he’s going get away with murder he’s still guilty. Also every individual has a different point of view because in “The Tell Tale Heart” the narrator’s point of view he thought the old man’s eye was evil and in the old man’s point of view he thinks nothing wrong with his eye. As the narrator got obsessed over the old man’s eye he thought that killing him would make his eye stop bothering him. Still at first the narrator thought that he was coping with his mental condition but he really
wasn’t.