The Tell Tale Heart Essay - 1015 Words

The Symbolism of a Beating Heart With a descriptive epistle of murder and insanity, â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† threw itself into history as a classic. The narrator tells of his plot to murder an old man with a â€Å"vulture eye.† Although he sneaks into his bedroom, night after night, he still cannot murder the old man, because he loves the man, but hates the eye. When seeing the vulture eye on the eighth night, he murders the old man and dismembers his body. While insisting upon his sanity he hears the old man’s heart beating under the floorboard. Because of a neighbor’s complaint, the police show up to investigate, but he quickly quells their suspicion with his smooth talk and calmness. If the heart stopped its loud beating, the murderer would†¦show more content†¦However, because murder inevitably follows the meeting of their eyes, the narrator hears the heart beating faster. â€Å"I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound†¦ I t was the beating of the old mans heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage† (Poe 1207). As it beats faster and faster, it pushes him further into his insanity. Hearing it beat so loudly, he believes not only will it burst, but also the neighbors will hear it. Thus, the insane man rushes headlong into the hideous act. â€Å"But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me -- the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old mans hour had come!† (Poe 1207-1208). Taking the part of his conscience telling him to tell the truth about the old man’s death, the lunatic hears the heart beating under the floorboard when the officers come into his house. Because the guilt was too much to bear, the heart, in a sense, tricked him into turning himself in. Thus, he cracked and could not withstand the sheer pressure. â€Å"‘Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no m ore! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!’† (Poe 1209). Although he planned the old mans murder and kept everything under control, he did not factor in what his guilt would do. HisShow MoreRelatedThe Tale the Heart Tells523 Words   |  2 PagesMany a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him although I chuckled at heart† (Poe 2). The narrator sees the man as his double through such an emphasis on their similar features, which later becomes crucial as the narrator feels the need for the displacement of his fear. The fact that the old man’s fear is warranted due toRead MoreEssay on The Tell-Tale Heart852 Words   |  4 PagesAndrew Fiddler Professor Esquivel English 1020 15 February 2013 Themes of â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† Edgar Allen Poe explores the similarity of love and hate in many stories, especially â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart.† In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart,† the narrator confesses a love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers the body and hides the pieces below the floorboards in the bedroom. When the police arrive, the narrator appears normal and unshaken by the murder. Later on, the man gives inRead MoreEssay on The Tell Tale Heart655 Words   |  3 PagesThe Insane Killer One of Edgar Allan Poe’s most terrifying tales is â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart†. Poe’s life was tragic because many of the women that Edgar Allan Poe loved very much had died of tuberculosis- his mother, his foster mother, his wife Virginia, and the men in his life kept abandoning him, so that made him dark and depressed. That darkness shows in a lot of his stories, including this one. â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† is a story about a murder the narrator commits. He kills an old man becauseRead MoreTell Tale Heart Essay1367 Words   |  6 PagesIn â€Å"Tell Tale Heart,† Edgar Allen Poe develops the plot and creates a mood through the use of metaphors, symbolism, imagery, and foreshadowing. The unique use of said literary devices enables the story to strongly entice the reader’s interest and spark high levels of curiosity. The vivid mental pieces of art are beautifully painted with metaphors, symbolism, and imagery, the tools mastered by the painter, Edgar Allen Poe. The initial analysis will be that of the old man’s eye. Mr. Poe uses veryRead More The Tell Tale Heart Essay1656 Words   |  7 PagesIn the â€Å"Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is extremely uncanny due to the reader’s inability to trust him. Right from the beggining the reader can tell that the narrator is crazy although the narrator does proclaim that he is sane. Since a person cannot trust a crazy person, the narrator himself is unreliable and therefore uncanny. Also as the story progress the narrator falls deeper and deeper into lunacy making him more and more unreliable, until the end of the story where the narratorRead More A Hanging and A Tell-Tale Heart1541 Words   |  7 Pagescharacters of the guard from George Orwell’s â€Å"A Hanging† and the servant from Edgar Allen Poe’s â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart†, they both experience the act of taking another person’s life. The guard from â€Å"A Hanging† works at a prison in Burma where felons await execution. His job is to lead the convicted men to their doom and makes sure everything goes routinely and swift. While the servant from â€Å"A Tell-Tale Heart† is a psychopathic man who lets his obsession over his boss’s glasseye lead him to plot and carryRead MoreAnalysis Of The Tell Tale Heart 1110 Words   |  5 Pagesdespicable villains are marked with indifference towards their moral reprehensibility. â€Å"In the Penal Colony† and â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† both elucidate the idea that corruption, darkness, and immorality alike are unperceivable to the one afflicted. However, while â€Å"In the Penal Colony† suggests that this blind nature is a result of dutiful honor, responsibility, and hope, â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† alternatively submits that it is a result of the possibility of fulfillment. Distinction between bothRead MoreThe Tell-Tale Heart Confession593 Words   |  2 PagesProbably not, but most americans have had this issue in that past. The narrator in â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† had the same exact same problem during his span as a butler. â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† is a short story composed about a butler that murders his master because he didn’t liked the way his master’s eye looked when it was open. The meaning of the title â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart†, means that every heart has a tale to tell. At the ending of the story the narrator openly admits that he killed his master to policeRead MoreThe Black Cat And The Tell Tale Heart957 Words   |  4 Pages the manner in which he expressed these emotions was his brilliantly horrifying short stories. In the two short stories â€Å"The Black Cat† and â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart† Poe uses characterization to portray the guilt of the narrator. â€Å"The Black Ca t† short story’s writing has a morbid effect on readers and describes the torments of guilt. In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† Poe explores the effects of the subconscious mind, the suppressing of guilt and the narrator’s guilt forcing him to confess.† â€Å"The Black Cat† isRead MorePsychosis and Guilt in The Tell-Tale Heart977 Words   |  4 PagesIn Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,† the narrator explains how he is not mad, how cautious he is in planning a murder. A person can argue however with the narrator of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, which he is indeed mad. The anxiety the narrator experiences through out the story makes him mad, it is also the guilt that brought on more anxiety to the narrator at the end of the story. The narrator constantly speaks of how he is not mad; he constantly as the reader why would they think he is mad. â€Å"True