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Analyzing Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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The Heart That tales all Edgar Allen Poe has created numerous emotion jerking poems. "The Tell-Tale Heart" was one of his works that plays on mental illness. This poem has a thick plot line, he is trying to defend his sanity, but he tells us that he killed a man. Poe tells us he did not kill the man in rage, or for riches, but because he feared the mans blue eyes. This line speaks a lot of the author, and of the fear he had. If you fear someone so much over the color of your eyes, your sanity can be put into question. He observed the man for a week. He watched the man as he slept, and in the morning acted as nothing had happened. After the 7th night he decided that it was time to kill the old man. The plot is beginning to thicken as it …show more content…

First of all he stalked this old man for a week, and watched him as he slept. Second he kills the old man because he believes that the mans heart beating will wake up the neighbors. Someone 's heart can not beat so loud that the neighbors can hear it. His sanity wasn 't in tack because to believe that someone in another house can hear someone 's heart beat is insane. Third killing the old man due to his heart beating loudly is a poor excuse to kill someone. To kill someone something in your head has to be messed up for you to be able to go to that extreme. Lastly Poe had to be insane because he cut the mans body up, and placed him underneath the floor boards of the mans bedroom. To kill someone takes a lot of craziness, but to cut someone 's body up into pieces is incredibly insane, and unhuman. "The Heart That Tales All ' really speaks volume 's in this poem. The old mans heart beating was key to this poem. The beating heart lead Poe farther down the path of mental illness, and deterioration. The old mans heart is what led Poe to his ultimate demise of killing the old man, and confessing to the sick and unhuman crime. One could say that Poe was in his own little world of paranoia, and I believe that in this poem Poe was very sick. He was clinically insane, unstable, and extremely paranoid of his surroundings around him. "The Tell-Tale Heart" told the true story of mental illness, and how it

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The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

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Obsession, internal conflict, and underlying guilt are all aspects of being human but when it’s associated with paranoia and insanity it may be just the recipe for the perfect crime as perceived by Edger Allan Poe in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe uses this as one of his shortest stories to discuss and provide an insight into the mind of the mentally ill, paranoia and the stages of mental detrition. The story 's action is depicted through the eyes of the unnamed delusional narrator. The other main character in the story is an old man whom the narrator apparently works for and resides in his house. The story opens off with the narrator trying to assure his sanity then proceeding to tell the tale of his crime, this shows a man deranged and hunted with a guilty conscience of his murderous act.

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