The Tell Tale Heart Conflict Essay

The Tell Tale Heart is a story, on the most basic level, of conflict. There is a mental conflict within the narrator himself (assuming the narrator is male). Through obvious clues and statements, Poe alerts the reader to the mental state of the narrator, which is insanity. The insanity is described as an obsession (with the old man’s eye), which in turn leads to loss of control and eventually results in violence. Ultimately, the narrator tells his story of killing his housemate. Although the narrator seems to be blatantly insane, and thinks he has freedom from guilt, the feeling of guilt over the murder is too overwhelming to bear. The narrator cannot tolerate it and eventually confesses his supposed “perfect” crime.
Poe never states if the narrator is male or female. The reader generally assumes that the narrator is male. A statement like “…would a madman be so wise as this?” (777) supports this assumption. The narrator is obsessed with the old man’s eye: “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!…Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold;…I made up my mind up to take the life of the old man” (777). Anyone who decides to kill someone because their eye looks strange to them is clearly mentally unstable. His methodic ways of watching the old man sleep are also strange: “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha!-would a madman have been so wise as this?” (777). Under the circumstances, a madman would surely be as wise as that. Only a madman would bother to look at an old man sleep when it is his eye that torments him: “And I did this for seven long nights-every night just at midnight-but found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (778). Why would a sane person bother to do such a worthless task for eight nights in a row? The answer is: A sane person would not perform this task. Even though the narrator was insane he expresses some sort of compassion in the statement: “I knew how the old
He uses repetition of wording often. People with mental and/or psychological problems sometimes repeat words or phrases. When speaking of a lantern’s state of darkness he says it was, “closed, closed, so that no light shone out,…”(777). On moving the lantern, he did it “slowly-very, very slowly…”(777). When he was ready to shin the light he “…undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously-cautiously…”(777). Again in explaining the lantern, “I resolved to open a little-a very, very little crevice in the lantern….-you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily…”(778). When he finally did get a look at the eye, repetition was again used: “It was open-wide, wide open-and I grew furious as I gazed upon it”(779). When the narrator speaks of the man’s live heart beating he says, “It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder…louder, I say, louder every moment!… But the beating grew louder, louder!”(779). When talking of the attack on the man the narrator repeats again: “He shrieked once-once only…Yes he was stone, stone dead…He was stone dead” (779). The narrators language is not better used to describe insanity and guilt than in the following passages when he feels as though he is