The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, is a short story comprised of the manic stalking of a disfigured old man by the narrator. Both characters in the story collide with forces that are out of their control, some of those forces would be the mental health of the narrator himself who suffers from paranoia and psychosis. Another would be the tinnitus that the narrator mistakes for his own super sensitive hearing and finally the eye of the old man which the narrator hates with a passion.
The narrators responses to these forces are indeed morally questionable from a sane mans perspective.
The narrator in the story is extremely mentally unstable. His illness is a force far beyond his own control, he respond to this in a very violent manner by killing the old man that he lives with because of his disfigured eye. The narrator tells the reader that “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” this clearly shows that the narrator is very paranoid and by analysing the way he reacts to his mental illness, the reader can agree that he is truly insane by responding so violently to something as little as a possible cataract in the old mans eye. The narrator’s response wasn’t morally questionable but in fact morally shocking and unacceptable, Poe wanted to show the reader that people who you trust the most might not be as trustworthy as originally thought. The narrator proves this by saying, “I loved the old man, he had never given me insult,” he had nothing against the old man except his eye, where as the old man himself trusted the narrator enough to live with him.
There is not many details revealed about the narrator but by the way he speaks and acts, the reader is able to understand a considerable amount about his mental health. The narrator describes himself as ‘nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous’, he spends every night leading up to the murder of the old man watching him sleep around midnight. This reference from the story shows the reader that he has obvious mental issues possibly caused by Insomnia of which has symptoms a lot like his own, a lack of sleep, hearing things that aren’t there like the ticking of a clock which he thinks is the old mans heart and extreme nervousness. This all could of lead to the psychosis he suffers from leading to the impairment of his own reality and lack of being able to tell between what is real and what is unreal. Poe uses the narrators mental health to show how serious the symptoms of insomnia/ psychosis are and how mental illness can warp a persons sense of reality to the point where they can’t tell between the ordinary.
Another force that is beyond the narrators control is his severe tinnitus that he mistakes for his own super-sensitive hearing. The narrator can hear the old mans heart before and after he kills him, ‘there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.’
The narrator imagines the sound of the old mans heart and compares it to a clock as if it is counting down to his death. The quote is repeated again after the murder of the old man when the narrator hears the heart start to beat again. This repetition is used to show that the narrator instead of having super-sensitive hearing is utterly mad. This response is surely immoral but the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for the narrator as his mental illness is far beyond his control. Poe uses the narrators tinnitus symptoms to show that guilt will be the harshest punishment to crimes against humanity.
The old mans eye can be viewed as a force beyond the narrators control, it seems to have a terrible effect on him which drives him to hate the eye and eventually leads him to murder the old man.
*to be continued….. (bom bom bom boooooom)
Harry Cooper, Blog 