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Essay: Discovering the Themes of The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

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  • Published: 1 April 2019*
  • Last Modified: 23 July 2024
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ay in heThe sequence of events in “The Tell-Tale Heart” involve a man who wants to murder another man but does not wish to be caught and punished according to the law. Due to this, we have to assume that he plans to commit a perfect crime even though the narrator does not say a lot about him until when the act happens and decides to hide the dead body under the floor panel. The narrator indicates how he spends time observing the moves of the old man and he does every night, and this gives him detail which leads to the actual murder. Moreover, the narrator wants to get by with murder as a way of fulfilling his desire. As a reader, we tend to think he is reliant on this older man, and he may gain something once he kills him. The victim could not be his father but he can be the uncle of the narrator, and this gives the narrator a position to inherit the household and some money which this old man owned (Poe p. 8). Furthermore, the intention why the narrator murders the old man could not be as a result of the old man’s pale blue eye and anything to do with his property. This is approximately a perfect-crime story in which the perpetrator nearly gets with it without for one fault. From this stories, the reader understands perpetrator point of view, and this causes a reader to identify some traits outlined. Once the narrator breaks and gives room for confession, the reader also participates in sharing the feeling of being uncovered and seized. According to the act of murder, the narrator is seen as insane, and it can be observed a certain force motivates him to a point of killing the old man. Following the killing, the narrator dispute against his madness, yet he later disproves that argument when he admits continuing to be haunted by the former innocent man’s heartbeat, and this drives him to further acts of insanity to a point of dismembering the old man and hiding him beneath the floorboards. In the description, the narrator outlines his animosity towards the former man although there is no real reason for this hatred. According to the narrator, the old man’s eye knows his inner heart and as a result, of this, he fears and hence eliminates him. The rising action and climax are evidenced when the narrator kills the old man and buries him beneath the floorboards believing that nothing about him will be exposed to the old man. Moreover, the falling action happens when the narrator discloses to the police of his wrongdoing.

Themes in Edgar Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

The first topic is the effect of guilt or conscience. The human heart cannot withstand the burden of guilt especially when murder is involved. The guilt must be confessed in one way to ensure someone is not consumed by his or her conscience. In the story, the storyteller kills the old man because of his pale blue eyes but later a guilt feeling is developed. In the basis, the storyteller seems to be very proud of himself and considers himself clever to have gotten away with the murder. Despite police arriving he display a calm nature which shows nothing is wrong at the moment, and even he leads them into the room of the old man. "In the excitement of my certainty, I brought seats into the room and wished for them here to rest from their debility, while I, in the wild braveness of my complete triumph, set my particular seat upon the very spot underneath which rested the cadaver of the casualty. (p. 6)" The guilt conscience develops and bothers him to a point where he begins to imagine how the heart of the old man is beating. “Be that as it may, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head throbbed, and I fancied a ringing in my ears… (p. 6)” Mental instability was growing, and that was why the narrator could hear ringing in his ears representing his conscience. It becomes apparent that the narrator start losing his mind and this clearly indicated to the police that narrator could be the prime suspect.

As argued by Poe, love and Hate are another themes that are clearly discussed. It is seen how the narrator confesses his love for the old man whom he later violently murders and dismembers his body (p. 10). Madness is displayed by the narrator when he attempts to separate the person of the old man whom he claims he loves from the old man’s evil eye and this triggers hatred in the narrator. Because of the delusional separation, the narrator remains unaware of the paradox of claiming to have loved his victim. Furthermore, there is a strange hatred between the narrator and the old man, and this is evidenced from the old man’s eye. The narrator tends to think there is more hidden information which disclosed his inner heart and, therefore, needs to eliminate the old man. Although narrator sympathizes when the old man lets out a groan, a feeling like chuckling arise.

Do not judge people by the outer cover. The narrator decided the old man wrongly because of his pale blue eye, and this made him make a horrible kind of crime which made him be jailed (Poe p. 14). He was also making fun of him and mocking him. Because of wrong judgment, the narrator decides to kill the old man who is innocent, and this created a guilt feeling in the life of the narrator. Moreover, when the narrator welcomes the police officers when they arrive, the police themselves tend to think the narrator is innocent. They make the wrong judgment because of the warm welcome from the murderer. The police officers continue to accept the narrator's story until the time his guilt conscience overtakes him to a point where he disclosed all the required information to the police. The police officers could not have realized the prime suspect since they saw narrator as someone who was upright and genuine at the beginning of the investigation. The guilt conscience made the narrator confess to killing the old man, and this brought the actual and justice in fulfillment although the life of the old man was lost through death.

Analysis

Poe utilizes his words monetarily as a part of the "Tell-Tale Heart" it is one of his littlest stories and gives an investigation of horribleness and mental decay. Poe strips the tale of overabundance point of interest as an approach to uplift the killer's fixation on particular and unadorned elements: the old man's eye, the pulse, and his specific case to logical soundness. Poe's monetary style and guided dialect consequently contribute toward the account content, and maybe this relationship of structure and substance genuinely epitomizes instability. Indeed, even Poe himself, similar to the thumping heart, is complicit in the plot to get the storyteller in his malevolent amusement.

As a study in suspicion, this story enlightens the intellectual disagreements that add to a deadly profile. For instance, the narrator concedes, in the maximum sentence, to being terrifyingly apprehensive, yet he cannot grasp why he ought to be thought distraught. He verbalizes his self-protection against franticness regarding high tactile limit. The storyteller of "The Tell-Tale Heart" sees his extreme touchiness as verification of his logical soundness, not a side effect of frenzy. This unique learning empowers the storyteller to tell this story in an exact and finish way, and he utilizes the elaborate apparatuses of portrayal for the reasons of his rational soundness supplication (Poe, p. 17). Notwithstanding, what makes this storyteller distraught and most dissimilar to Poe is that he neglects to understand the coupling of account shape and substance. He aces exact structure, yet he unwittingly lays out a story of homicide that sells out the franticness he needs to deny.

Another disagreement integral to the story includes the pressure between the storyteller's abilities for adoration and scorn. Poe investigates here a mysterious riddle that individuals at times hurt those whom they adore or require in their lives. Poe's storyteller cherishes the old man. He is not ravenous for the old man's riches, nor vindictive as a result of any slight. The storyteller in this way disposes of thought processes that may ordinarily rouse such a brutal homicide. As he declares his particular rational soundness, the narrator focuses on the old man's vulture-eye. He lessens the old man to the pale blue of his eye in a violent manner. He needs to discrete the man from his "Evil Eye" so he can save the man the weight of blame that he credits to the eye itself (Poe p. 23). The storyteller neglects to see that the eye is the "I" of the old man, a unique piece of his personality that cannot be secluded as the storyteller unreasonably envisions.

According to Poe, the murder of the old man represents the degree to which the storyteller isolates the old man's character from his physical eye, (p. 30). The storyteller sees the eye as entirely separate from the man, and accordingly, he is fit for killing him while keeping up that he cherishes him. The storyteller's yearning to kill the man's eye propels his homicide; however, the storyteller does not recognize this demonstration will end the man's life. By weakening his casualty, the storyteller further denies the old man of his mankind. The narrator affirms his origination of the old man's eye as partitioned from the man by completion and transforming him into such a variety of parts. That technique betrays him when his brain envisions different parts of the old man's body conflicting with him.

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