The Tell-Tale Heart Symbolism

Poe works with symbolism in his stories to depict how fear can distort a person’s mind. In Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator is captivated with the elderly man’s eye because he fears that it is watching him everywhere he goes. Losing all sense of the real world, the narrator decides to kill the old man. Consequently, the obsession with the eye makes him become absent-minded; thus, not considering the eye will not be the only thing to die. Poe writes, “...for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye,” (75). The eye represents the fear of being constantly watched and most importantly, judgement. The story is showing the audience that something as little as a small obsession can brainwash a person and induce paranoia. The author
includes this in the story to show how fear can twist a person’s grip on reality; in addition, making a person numb to the environment around them. The narrator lets the paranoia and fear overcome him, resulting in the death of the old man.