Edgar Allan PoeS The TellTale Heart Essay

, Research Paper

The Tell-Tale Heart

The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is definitely a person suffering from a mental illness, most probably Schizophrenia. In the first paragraph, he said that his disease didn’t destroy nor dulled his senses but it had actually sharpened them, specially his hearing. The narrator said that he has no reason to kill the old man for he was kind to him. But whenever the old man set his vulture-like eyes to him, it scared him so much that he wanted to kill him and get rid of the “evil eyes” forever. He planned on taking the old man’s life for so long but every time he sneaks into his victim’s room, the evil eyes are closed and sleeping making it impossible for him to do what he had planned. On the eight night he accidentally made a little sound and the old man woke up. From where he was standing at the door, he can see the eyes that send shivers down his spine. He heard the old man’s heart beating louder and louder (or for him at least) and he worried that the neighbor’s would hear it. He jumped into the room and brought the old man to the floor and pulled the bed on top of his victim. He killed the man, or so he thought, and placed the body underneath the floor planks. He was so pleased with what he did and he was so sure that he didn’t leave any stains or signs that the old man is dead. The way the author presented the main character’s behavior and thoughts clearly suggests that the narrator is not sane. From the way he heard things, to the hatred he felt towards the evil eyes as if the eyes alone could hurt him. The narrator thought that other people could also hear what he was hearing. He said that he had heard the old man’s heart beating again under those floor planks and he thought that the officer’s smiles are just covers for they already know what had happened (a sign of paranoia), he confessed about the old man’s body.