Obsessions And Internal Conflict In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allen Poe is famous for his works displaying gothic themes, brutality, and unstable characters. The Tell-Tale Heart, one of his best known stories, involves an irrational narrator. The narrator kills an old man due to an obsession the narrator has with the man’s eye. The narrator lacks sufficient motivation for the murder, only that he was terrified of the old man’s eye. The narrator successfully executes his plan, but eventually gets caught due to his own paranoia.

How murder first came to enter the narrators mind is unknown. There was no real motive as said: “Object there was none... I loved the old man. He had never wronged me...” (884.) The narrator states that the old man's eye was a pale blue color with film over it, resembling a vulture. The narrator insists that he is not insane however his repeating of this, and his actions, contradict one another. Being so threatened by the old man's eye, the killer attacks his master at night, cuts up his body and buries it beneath the floor boards. Although the old man had sensed his killer in his bedroom, he was too terrified to run for his life. The fact that the narrator kills this innocent old man because of his eye is proof enough he suffers from psychological imbalance To further the evidence that the narrator is, he continues to hear the man's heart beat beneath the floor boards. Although it seems as if it is his own heart beating, he automatically assumes the old man's heart is haunting his mind. The characters are what play the key role in this short story. The killer is suffering from insanity, which he believes is the cause of the evil eye. The old man is never really developed within the story, just known he is innocent and has never wronged his killer. The old man could just represent an innocence who is opposite of a murderer's mind. Within the whole plot the characters unfold an unsettling dark theme for the story; a cold hearted killer and a loving old man with an

As the narrator goes on secretly watching him night after night he sees less of the person that he has grown to care for and just the man’s evil eye. It is almost as if the narrator had to dehumanize the old man before he could kill him.

The story begins with the narrator trying to convince his audience that he is not mad, but then proceeds to tell us how he killed the old man because he hated his eye. The narrator is telling about how every night he goes into the old man's room to murder him, he tries this for about a week, but every time the narrator creeps into the room the old man's eyes are closed and the narrator cannot see the hideous eye and therefore cannot murder the man. The seventh night however, the old man had trouble sleeping and the narrator heard the heartbeat of the old man and this filled him with rage. He murdered the old man by placing the heavy bed on top of him. After killing the old man, the narrator dismembers his body and places it into the floor boards. The narrator’s neighbors heard the sound and called the police, who come to investigate the narrator's house. Being confident in his work of hiding his sin, the narrator gladly tours the policemen around his house and into the room of which the old man’s body

Both narrators had nonsensical motives for murdering the victim, but they were different in a few ways. In “The Tell Tale Heart,” the narrator absolutely despises the old man’s eye. When the narrator says, “Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me an insult” (105), the reader presumes that the narrator would never do anything to hurt the old man. But, the way the narrator describes the eye, “He had the eye of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold” (105) shows the reader just how much the narrator hated the man’s eye. The quote also reveals to the reader a reason why the narrator could potentially do harm unto the old man. Even though the narrator had nothing against the old man except for his bothersome eye, he acted impulsively and killed the old man because he could not stand the eye any longer. Conversely, the narrator from “The Cask of Amontillado” killed the man because he hated the man. For instance the excerpt, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” (75) shows that the narrator, Montresor, is planning revenge on Fortunato because of an insult he said.

His obsession revolves around the man’s eye. According to the main character the man has an “eye of a vulture” The narrator’s paranoia and pride lead him to violently killing the old man after 8 nights of waiting and planning the old man’s death. The main character should be sentenced to the death penalty because he planned the murder, carried out the murder, and cut up the body.

In “The Tell-Tale Heart” a man is obsessed with an eye that belongs to an old man he lives with. This story is told from a first person point of view by the main character, whose name is never mentioned. The first thing he tells the reader multiple times is that he is not mad, only nervous. He claims that once the thought of the eye entered his brain it was all he could think about. The man did not hate the old man, but there was something about the eye that made his skin crawl. “For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with film over it,” (37). He believed the eye was disgusting and the only way to permanently get rid of it was to take the old man’s life. This man stays awake at night and watches the old man sleep while he plans to do something about the eye. The eighth time the narrator sneaks into the man’s room while he’s sleeping, the old man is awoken by a noise and then is murdered by the man. A neighbor hears a scream and calls the

To begin with, his motive for murder is the epitome of insane. The text states “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this” (2). Even though the old man does absolutely nothing to upset his younger companion, the protagonist still strives to end his life, all because of an eye. With this newfound objective, the story teller quickly acts, describing how he advances in paragraph 3: “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight -- with what dissimulation, I went to work!” Specifically, the main character stalks the old man throughout a whole week before finally striking. At midnight, he cautiously opens the bedroom door and sticks in a lantern, just enough so he lands a single ray of light upon the evil eye. On the other side of the spectrum, he lures the old man into a false sense of security during the day by acting good-natured and kindhearted. Although the raconteur has expressed his psychotic mind and vexatious ideas, the infamous principle “innocent until proven guilty” prevents his conscious from entering the depths of guilt since no serious devilry has been done

First, horror is developed in “The Tell Tale Heart” by the insanity of the narrator. The narrator believes he is a sane person, but contradicted himself when he kills the old man. This creates a complex in the character’s mind. When the police shows because the neighbors heard a yell, he begins to hear the old man’s heartbeat, but his guilt consumes him and he confesses to murdering the old man and putting his body underneath the floorboards. Also, in the beginning of the story, the narrator describes why he wants to kill the old man. “It was impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night” (Para. 2). His insane idea of killing the old man because of his vulture eye pops into his thoughts without a preconceived notion of doing so. The murder is premeditated and thought out as each night he cracks the door open and glares the lantern directly at the vulture eye. The insanity of the narrator develops “The Tell Tale Heart” into horror.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a short story about internal conflict and obsession, showcases the tortured soul due to a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a man deranged and plagued with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia, and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes fixated on the victim’s (the old man’s) eye, and his conscience forces him to demonize the eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator’s obsession causes an unjust death which culminates into internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The

Normally when a person’s buttons are pushed, they do not plan to murder the person who carries out the pet peeve. Although, in the short story “A Tell-Tale Heart,” a pet peeve drives the narrator so insane that he decides to murder the old man he lives with. The pet peeve is of the blue vulture eye that the old man has. It haunts the narrator and makes his blood run cold whenever it lands on him. He decides to violently murder the man to get rid of the vulture eye.

Edgar Allen Poe was known for his dark-romanticism writings which evoked horror in readers. Seen specifically in his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, readers are able to get into the mind of the mentally ill narrator who murders an elderly man, one whom he claimed to love. Poe created conflict in this story by having the narrator admit to loving the man and having him be his caretaker. Conflict, and the story line, is created because it makes readers question why he would commit such a heinous crime as killing and dismembering the man. Readers eventually find out that it is the elderly man’s eye that pushes the narrator to do what he does. The narrator is trying to justify his actions and prove his sanity by explaining how he observes

The narrator can think of nothing else but killing the old man with which he lives even though he has nothing against this man and actually doesn’t mind him. He finds the man’s eye to be so repulsive that the only way to deal with it is by destroying the old man. The eye is described as resembling “that of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” The narrator also describes how this eye makes him feel when he states that “I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness – all a dull blue, with a hideous veil that chilled the very marrow in his bones.” This startling quote helps to deepen the story’s suspense. The theme of violence is also shown when the murderer describes what he does with the old man’s body after killing him. “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.”

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a first-person narrative short story that showcases an enigmatic and veiled narrator. The storyteller makes us believe that he is in full control of his mind yet he is experiencing a disease that causes him over sensitivity of the senses. As we go through the story, we can find his fascination in proving his sanity. The narrator lives with an old man, who has a clouded, pale blue, vulture-like eye that makes him so helpless that he kills the old man. He admits that he had no interest or passion in killing the old man, whom he loved. Throughout the story, the narrator directs us towards how he ends up committing a horrifying murder and dissecting the corpse into pieces. The narrator who claims to

“TRUE! Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous’’, the narrator’s blood ran cold each and every time he looks at the old man, due to his vulture eye. He shall complete his task after seven straight nights by suffocating the old man and proceeds by dismembering the body, cleans the blood and hides the body parts underneath three planks. During the murder, the old man does a shriek to aware the neighbors. Officers had to search the house. He convinces the authorities that he didn’t commit the murder. The untrustworthy protagonist begins to hear what he believes is the old man’s heart, which clearly is the guilt of the narrator. The crazy protagonist can’t handle the guilt and confesses. The horrifying climax pose descriptive detail, repetition