The Tell Tale Heart Insanity Essay

The narrator’s motive for killing the innocent old man is unclear as he thinks it was probably his eye. Taking the life of a person, an innocent old man, because of a single feature that the narrator thought is evil or disturbing is irrational. Secondly, the narrator is affected by an unknown disease. The narrator states “Yes, I have been ill,

“The Tell-Tale Heart is about a neurotic man’s murder on an old man living in the same house because he finds the old man’s “vulture eye” unbearable to him.” (Shen) Frenzied with a voracious intent to hurt the old man with not a purposeful reason of robbing him, an unnamed man becomes bedeviled by his own mind. As a result, of this obsession, for one week he would peek into the old man’s room, ever so quietly, around twelve midnight and shine a small light upon the old man’s eye. According to Poe, “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.” (199) Furthermore, an unnamed man was not interested in the old man’s gold or possessions, it was the old man’s “evil eye”, as he would call it, that tormented

And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him,...”. He is also crazy because he followed through with his plan to kill him. In the story, it is revealed that he followed through when it says “And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man's hour had come! With a

Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The entire story is a confession of a brutal murder with no rational motive. The narrator repeatedly tries to convince the audience he hasn’t gone mad though his actions prove otherwise. To him his nervousness sharpens his senses and allows him to hear things from heaven Earth and hell. The narrator planned to kill his roommate whom had never wronged him and had loved dearly because he felt his pale blue eye was tormenting him. The narrator claims “his eye resembles that of a vulture.” The madman then goes on to explain how when the eye is on him his blood turns cold, and he has to get rid of the eye forever. He sneaks into his roommate’s room for seven nights at midnights and shines a

He also really believes he has been there because he says he has heard many things from there and knows what it’s like. But to go there, you would have to die. So he most likely can't tell if he's not on earth, and in heaven, hell, or on earth when he commits the murder. Also, most insane people can't tell where they are sometimes or see things that aren't there. So he could have believed that he was somewhere else when the murder was committed because he thinks he was in heaven, hell, and on earth.

Research Essay: “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe, is a story of a nauseating death. Murder as an upshot of an eye; literally. Incongruous actions are taken by Poe when he determines the fate of a man he claims love upon, all because “He had the eye of a vulture” (Poe), and Poe plots the death of this old man. As noted in Short Story Criticism, it’s stated that; What precipitated the narrator’s insanity and the subsequent murder was his irrational obsession with the old man’s so called “Evil Eye.” The narrator freely admits to his auditors that this was his Primmum mobile: “yes, it was this!

The narrator doesn’t believe that he is insane. He argues that if he were insane, could he have been so wise, precise and careful about murdering the old man. On the eighth night of watching, the narrator makes too much noise and awakens the old man. The narrator waits, but the old man does not fall back to sleep because he feels the presence of the narrator. The narrator grows impatient and brightens his lantern to see into the room. A sliver of light filters through the crack in the door and falls directly on the old

The narrator clearly states that there is no logical reason fro him to kill the old man, but for some reason the narrator cannot think of anything but the man?s eye and says that it gave him the idea of murder. The chilling feeling that the eye gave him planted in him, the thought to kill the old man, and after thinking about it day and night, that is what brings the narrator to his mad state. He is so obsessed with it that he goes into

"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; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man" (2). This citation shows the narrator wanting to kill the old man. Killing a person does not convey that he is insane and that his story is not to be believed. What does show that he is mad, is the reason for killing the old man.

The narrator murdered the old man with a sane mind because he was cautious also the narrator takes a long time to plan the murderer. If he was insane he probably would have done it the first night.The man takes up 8 nights in a row before murdering him.Also he said “There was nothing to washout-no stain of any kind-no blood spot whatever I had been to wary for that”. That means that he hid the evidence so well that know one would know that he killed the old

While the mad narrator quickly explains in detail that he killed the old man for none of the usual reasons but only because he could not stand the look of the man’s cloudy, pale blue eye, this short story illustrates how the inner conflict that the subconscious can inflict upon one’s self through the state of madness and an emotional breakdown and how a person’s inner turmoil and fear can drive him insane.

His obsession reaches a climax when he decides he can't stand it anymore and decides to murder the old man. The old man’s eye plays a central role in the story because it is his eye that leads the narrator to murder him, while also symbolizing the lack of clarity in the narrator’s views because of his mental illness. The narrator states

The only time he can kill the old man is when he sees the horrid eye because it is the eye he hates not the old man. The narrator, being represented by the eye, is very attached to the old man but his own blindness prevents him from being able to move past the eye. By wanting to destroy the eye he is set on his own self-destruction as the eye is simply a reflection of him. This shows that the narrator believes that in a way, by destroying the evil eye he is killing the evil that he has found inside but by doing so he is just setting up his own doom as the penalty for murder can be death. Since the narrator is the old man “By victimizing the old man with horror, the narrator-protagonist is ironically victimizing himself”

One reason I do not agree with the narrator when he tells me that he isn't "mad," is because he killed a harmless old man that was giving him food and shelter, because he didn't like his eye. Another reason why I do not agree with the narrator is because if he was going to kill a man - which is already insane - and the narrator stalks him for a week solid, the narrator should probably have a better murder weapon or at least a better plan than killing the old man with a mattress. One more reason I think that the narrator is insane is, after the narrator killed the man, he minced the man up in a bathtub before he hid the body under the floor boards. The last reason why I think that the narrator is crazy is after he already committed the crime,

Thus proving he is not insane due to the amount of effort he put in to carrying out the old man’s murder. The Narrator had the mental ability to control himself during those 8 nights and not murder the old man right then and there. The Narrator has self control and he knows the importance of hiding a body so as not to get caught. An insane person woud have been very careless and no self