Of Fear And Infatuation In Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

In Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator exhibits many traits of schizophrenia. Throughout the story, a man is terrorized by the eye of an old man and when he can no longer can take looking at the eye, he decides to kill him. He hides his body under the floorboards of their house and when officers come to search the house, they do not find anything, making the narrator overconfident in his plan. Guilt builds up and the man eventually cannot take the noise that he hears and confesses to killing the old man in front of the officers. Many actions of the man prove to be symptoms of schizophrenia.

Everyone must know that fear has its negative effects, but it also has its positive effects on humans. Fear can help you to be more aware and prevents harm to you and others around you since you are more cautious. However, on the other side of the spectrum, fear can bring obsession such as losing control of yourself to focus on certain people or objects, and can bring poignancy to your life. Both aspects of fear are shown in Edgar Allan Poe’s renown stories, ¨The Tell-Tale Heart,¨ ¨The Pit and the Pendulum,¨ and ¨The Masque of Red Death,¨ where all the main characters are introduced to fear, but all approach it differently.

Edgar Allen Poe’s story titled “The Tell-Tale Heart” is very well-known for demonstrating what guilt can do to one’s mind. The narrator of the story speaks of living with a man who had never harmed him, yet displayed his eye in a way that drove the narrator insane. The narrator, who remains nameless, gradually expresses his desires of killing the old man in his residence, even though he insists throughout the story that he is not insane. As the tale progresses it is seen that the narrator tries not only to convince himself, but the reader as well that his reason to murder the old man is valid. However, much to his dismay, reality catches up to him.

Demonic Possession Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as one of the greatest writers of all time, writing many of some America’s most well known stories. “A Tell-Tale Heart” is a story narrated by a man who, is believed to have schizophrenia and kills an innocent old man merely because of his eye. Though there may be a different diagnosis for the murderer, the story is told in first person but referring to the past, meaning that the narrator may be telling someone else. Throughout the story, the narrator shows a few strange actions. Such as how; the perspective in which the story is being told, the narrator strangely confesses in a loud and expressive way, the old man’s eye being the only reason as to why the narrator would want to kill him, the

“Harken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story. ”(Poe 1) To explain this quote in detail the narrator is explaining to the reader that he is able to explain his thinking while planning the murder. In this short story the caregiver of an old man believes that he wants to kill the old man to rid himself of the old man’s vulture eye.

Edgar Allan Poe Living with fear in every corner, waiting for death in every hall, Poe experiences all of it and only had one way to express himself; and that was through his writing. Fear, something that can be helpful to stop the human mind from making a life changing decision. Fear is helpful because it helps restraint us from the bad. Fear is harmful as well because it can cause the body to be so scared it can cause the person to be paranoid.¨The Tell-Tale Heart,¨ and ¨The Masque of Red Death¨ are stories of Poe´s, all show fear with symbols, irony and figurative language.

In the post-war period, the art of the short story flourished in American literature. Among its most respected practitioners was Flannery o’ connor who renewed the fascination of such giants as Faulkner and Twain with the American south, developing a distinctive southern gothic esthetic wherein characters acted at one level as people and at another symbols. Most of the authors interested to give many moralistic short stories in American literature. In this session we have to discuss about two short stories based as the theme of isolation. That the novels are The Furnished Room by o’ Hendry and The Tell-Tale Heart by Poe.

There is always something that bothers us in life, whether it’s others or even our own conscious. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator has a difficult time following through with his cruel acts because a part of him knows it’s truly wrong. Throughout the story, his crimes bring more tension between him and the old man. Suspense is created with his every move, leaving readers hanging on the edge of their seats. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe builds suspense by using symbolism, inner thinking, and revealing information to the reader that a character doesn’t know about.

Would you like to read the scariest story? Either way you should know a famous author, Edgar Allan Poe. With a poem of his own, The Tell-Tale Heart gave a lot of audience. It shows how the Poe kills a man very slowly making you wanting more of his actions. The Tell-Tale Heart has the more insanity than I felt a Funeral in my Brain.

Our emotions can turn fear into favorable actions. Fear can modify the way our actions conquer us. It can help us with awareness, survival, and saving us from death. Fear can also lead to paranoia and obsession. If we obsess over our fear and what’s ahead, death will overcome us and take over.

Edgar Allen Poe’s “the tell–tale heart” is a better example of insanity because he uses comparison, questioning, and long pauses in the story to emphasize the insanity of the narrator. To begin with Edgar Allen Poe uses comparison to emphasize the narrator’s insanity by comparing the narrator’s actions or feelings to the things that normally insane people would use. The text states “His eye was like the eye of a vulture these of those terrible birds. ”(Poe 2).