Student Essay on The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart

Summary:   Explores the story The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe. Discusses the nameless, genderless, and ageless killer that narrates the story. Describes why his portrayal is appealing due to Poe's first person narrative.

'The Tell Tale Heart' is a story about a man who killed an old man just because he didn't like the way his eyes looked like. The main character speaks about madness as being a gift and not a kid of disability for example in lines 2 - 4 he says: ' but why would you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them'. This person is trying to persuade us that the disease isn't bad. The mad man killed the old man and then cut him up and put him under the floorboards of the house.

In 'The Tell Tale Heart' the main character remains nameless, genderless, and ageless, he thinks that he has done the right thing by killing the old man and that he got rid of the 'evil eye'. The main character is very confident about what he has done and think that he had a very good reason for killing the old man which was, he didn't like the way his eyes looked and because he thought that the one eye was evil. We can see evidence of that in lines 10 - 14 where he says: 'I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-very gradually- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.' In my opinion I think that this is a no good reason for killing a human being it's like me killing someone because they have ginger hair or freckles.

The character in 'The Tell Tale Heart' had a lot of conversations throughout the story but all the conversations were to him. The disease he talked about could be split personality or even schizophrenia, which is when a person cannot relate their thoughts, or emotions to reality; this would explain why the madman talks to himself. The things that the character talked about were very strange. He talked about how every night at midnight for the last week he came to check on the old man to see the 'evil eye' and to look up on the old man. The character talked about how cautiously he opened the door so the old man wouldn't hear him. He would open the door 'just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye'-as in lines 29 - 31.

In 'The Tell Tale Heart' the main can hear and see a few strange things. The character sees the old mans eye as evil. This, maybe, is not unusual because the old man could be looking at the character in a strange way and by looking that way at him the character may think that the old man has an 'evil eye'. After he has murdered the old man and when he is sitting down in the room where the old man is dead under the floorboards chatting with the police he all of a sudden starts to hear a heartbeat, which is getting louder, louder and louder. This heartbeat may represent the characters guilty conscience and shows us that the character is actually nervous about what he has done. However it's those mad people don't have a conscience, and so this may support the characters argument about not being mad, but on the other hand hearing a heartbeat that no one else can hear is a little bit strange and points out that he might be mad. So the heartbeat is the key point in answering the question is he or is he not mad"

'The Tell Tale Heart' is not as thrilled as the any other person would be about the crime. The character is just happy the he got rid of the 'evil eye'. He treats it like a job so he is happy that the job was done successfully. Other people's reactions would be a bit strange whereas the reaction of the main character in 'The Tell Tale Heart' is very normal it's like 'Ok, job done move on'.

Once the character has committed the murder they are starting to get rid of the evidence and in this part where they are meant to make everything normal in my mind they make us think that they are even madder then we thought at the beginning of the story. In 'The Tell Tale Heart' the character kills the old man and then he chops him off into pieces and puts the body under the floorboards of the room, which in a way is smart but also very sick and insane.

'The Tell Tale Heart' is told in the 1st person narrative whereas for instance the 'Of Mice And Men' is told in the 3rd person narrative. I think that the story is better told if it's in the 1st person narrative because it lets you see the story from the characters point of view and it lets you engage with the thoughts and filings of the character.

In the 'Tell Tale Heart' rhetorical questions are used. The use of the rhetorical questions are used to create trust between the reader and the narrator, also they are used to express anger from the main character; this is showing that the character isn't happy when people call him mad.

In the story there was also strange use of punctuation to affect the madness. The character uses a lot of repetitions like: 'very, very' and 'louder, louder' etc. There also are a lot of dashes so that the sentence is made longer and in a way makes us; the readers think that the character is mad. There are a lot of short and long sentences in the story. The short sentences were mainly used they to create a bigger impact on the reader whereas the long sentences were boring and mostly describing things. The short sentences were used when the main character was feeling tense especially when he started to hear the heartbeat of the old man.

I think that the portrayal of the nameless narrator is more appealing to because the technique in which Poe writes is better than the one of John Steinbeck. I think that because Poe wrote in the 1st person narrative, I could relate better with the character and get into his inner thoughts whereas the 3rd person narrative, which was used by John Steinbeck, doesn't give you that kind of insight into the character, whereas the 1st person narrative helps us understand the characters madness. The other good thing that Edgar Allan Poe did was that he made the madness of the character grow more and more as the story went on.