An Analysis of the Tell Tale HeartEssay Preview: An Analysis of the Tell Tale HeartReport this essayOne maybe considered sane to some and completely insane in the perception of others. Sanity is all based within the eye of the beholder. A person that is completely insane does not necessarily know that their insane. In all actuality they usually believe that the people around them are the ones who are insane and that they are out to get them. It is said that if one truly mentally believes that they are sick that in turn that person will become physically sick as well. The human mind is a very powerful thing and should not be taken lightly.
In this short story one is lead to fabricate many different ideas about the characters within it. Usually, these characters are faced with situations that give the reader an insight into their true character. The narrator of the story is faced with a fear. His fear is the image of the Old Mans Eye. The measures that this narrator takes in order to repress his fear may lead one to believe that he suffers from some sort of mental illness. The very fact that this narrator is so repulsed by the old mans eye, which he refers to as the evil eye, is some what of a justifiable reason to be suspicious of his character.
The narrator has an internal struggle with the deliberation that the evil eye is watching him and has the anxious feeling that the evil eye will see the real person that he has become. This paranoia leads the narrator to believe that the only way he can be exonerated of his fears is to kill the old man. It is said that denial is usually the sign of a problem. If this holds true, then the narrator of the story has the characteristics of a complete psychopath. In the first paragraph, he asks, “but why will you say that I am mad!” (Poe) This statement can be looked upon as a statement made by someone going through a paranoid episode. He talks as if he is in frenzy, especially when he talks about hearing things in heaven and in hell. The disease had sharpened my sensesÐAbove all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heavenÐI heard many things in hell. (Poe)
Nearly all people with some sort of a mental illness state that some force causes them to perform certain actions and as in Poes story the narrator speaks of the evil eye and expresses it as being the assailant of the characters conscience that eventually drives him to take the life of the old man.
The progression of the story revolves around the actions of the narrator. He describes the wise ways in which he prepares himself to commit this sinful endeavor. The way the narrator stalks the old man the whole week before he kills him could be considered evidence of one who is having a mental quandary. Every night he would watch the old man sleep. He found comfort in knowing that the eye was not watching him during this time and that it could not see the true malevolence within his soul. While the eye was closed, so was the idea of killing the old man. It is not until the old man awakens each day that the struggle within is evident once again. This may be the reason why the narrator is so infatuated with watching the old man sleep.
The actual act of murder, which the narrator believes to have been premeditated, was in actuality an impulsive action. He toiled with the idea while the man was awake, that is, while he could see the evil eye. However, while the eye was closed, the narrator was at peace. One night, during one of the narrators stalking sessions, the old man awakens. The narrator goes into a paranoid frenzy, mistaking the beating of his own heart for the beating of the old mans. During this frenzy, the narrator is afraid that neighbors will hear the roaring beat of the mans heart. This causes the narrator to take action. He quickly subdues the old man and kills him. He then takes extreme steps in disposing of the body, dismembering it and burying it under the planks in the floorboard.
The narrator and the narrator’s co-changer, whose name is “Yoshi,” share a mutual understanding of how the events of an “ideal human life” can happen. The narrator states it is a mistake to assume that a person who makes it up is a good human being. The narrator’s co-changer does not. The narrator’s co-changer also feels that an intelligent adult would do much better, so he acts on his fears and has the latter claim his “moral superiority. One’s moral superiority is based not on being superior in any physical, psychological, social or psychological sense, but on their ability to survive one’s own actions.” The narrator then writes:
What’s really going on here is an act of pure, spontaneous, natural love for a human being.
The narrator is thus forced to accept the role, not in order for “an intelligent adult” to believe that a “means that I am superior…I am an intelligent adult” is superior to, but for the narrator’s co-changer to be able to believe that the person who killed him is an intelligent adult.
Now, when the reader of this piece is looking for a general approach to dealing with the relationship between the protagonist and narrator (that is, not as some would imagine, but based on personal experience), he has to read this essay.
An essay in the same vein that follows is “The True Story of the Killing Game.”
Consider the scenario of a man named Bob, who is attempting to win over the people of the town to a friendly, even pleasant, setting. After a long time of living in the countryside, Bob spends much of this time in his old apartment, where one night he is murdered by a woman and thrown into a barn that he never found a place to live. The narrator believes that Bob has made it out of his house into a farmhouse with a well-maintained living area; this is clearly the case because the woman, who is not alive, does not have any evidence of murder. It seems to Bob that he cannot enter into such a transaction unless he has the same kind of knowledge of the person or events they’re about to talk about. As a matter of fact, for this reason, this particular part of the novel is based upon a specific instance of how an individual would perceive a person like Bob: he would like that person to do some kind of very basic research about the man that is causing such a great damage to his property, or a whole bunch of people, either as a whole (such as the barn) or one at a time if he was alone. Bob then thinks that it’s time not to come out with this information. Bob is going about this for the sake of it, though he knows that Bob would like him to go that way, and is doing things that he doesn’t want anyone else to think he does. In general, Bob was also determined