The narrator attempts to reassure his audience he is of sound mind. For example, the narrator says “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” Another irony in the story is that the narrator refers to how he loves the old man and was never so kind to him as he was right before the murder. This is ironic because he loves the old man by the systematically plans to murder him. Poe uses imagery throughout the story by referencing the clock and time as a way to describe how slowly he moved. The narrator says “A watches minute hand moves more quickly than did mine”, the narrator sees himself as a clock, counting down the old man’s
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!
Passion there was none. I loved the old man…Now this is the point. You fancy me mad”(37). As a result of this specific first person style of writing, the audience assumes insanity. By the narrator already assuming psychological judgment from the reader, the reader can also feel to question and doubt his sanity through just the first-person perspective.
This main character is so confident about himself and his madness, moreover, he is completely sure that he has done the right thing by killing the strange eyed old man. He tries to explain that this murder wasn’t without reason, he says that the old man’s “one eye” was “evil” (lines 9-10-11) and this mainly caused him to plan the crime. The narrator explains in detail, how carefully he visits the old man every midnight and how mad he gets and reacts when he sees that vulture eye. The narrator has a quite strange relationship with the old man, since he visits him also every morning and asks how he passed the night. This shows the changeable psychology of the murderer, most probably because of the mental “disease” he mentioned in the beginning of the story (line 2).
Gellburg’s response to Slyvia’s outburst is not evidently displayed through speech, but through the use of Miller’s stage directions: ‘He is stock still; horrified, fearful’. The words ‘horrified’ and ‘fearful’ suggest that the news of such events came as a shock to him and undoubtedly indicate that he is affected by such news and is also stricken by Sylvia’s powerful, unexpected revelation of her feelings. Miller conveys the message that that Gellburg finally comes to understand his ignorant attitude as one that has led to his self-denial and self-hatred. It later becomes clear in the play that Gellburg is suppressing an important part of who he is, and in scene eleven, he confesses to a bottled-up desire of ‘going and sitting in the Schul with the old men and pulling the tallis over my head’. Sylvia, in her frustration with Gellburg, says ‘Don’t sleep with me again’ in a rather commanding manner.
The killer is masterful in his planning and really does it swiftly. This adds to the effectiveness of the killer being psychotic, and the more psychotic he is the more you get into character/story. The setting doesn’t play a major role put this is a good thing because you only need to be in the mind of the killer to understand what is happening in the story. Another big part of the author’s master piece is the way he uses language. There are several evidential parts throughout the story that add to the overall crazy killer.
Psychoanalytical Analysis of “The Tell-Tale Heart” Edger Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” shows a narrator being driven mainly by his ego. The narrator starts out by claiming that he in not mad and continues to make this claim throughout the story using a logical approach. As his story continues though it clearly shows opposite of it what he claims, but the narrator seems to refuse that he is insane and uses many arguments to prove it. The narrator is fixed on doing his crime with extreme caution, but in the end, his ego causes him to confess his deed. When one first reads “The Tell-Tale Heart” they are inclined to feel that it his id not his ego controlling him, but when you look closer more evidence seems to point to the fact the his ego is more in control.
The theme of insanity is easily recognizable and plays a large role in “The Tell-Tale Heart” to why the protagonist murders the old man; However, in “‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ [readers only see] the results of madness, not its origins” (Symons 241). The narrator begins the story by stating he is not insane but this “produces [the] opposite effect upon the reader” because of the lack of reliable motivation (Robinson 369). It is the psychological illness of the protagonist that urges him to “rid [himself] of the eye” (Poe 188). Here, readers are at a disadvantage as they can only view the eye through the biased,
Although his actions are very insane, they can be seen as rational to reader considering hedonism. Devotion to pleasure, hedonism, makes Dorian be deceitful about his true self by deflecting the attention of the public from the mad man to the beautiful and intelligent gentlemen. Dorian is, young, sensitive, and emotional, meaning that he is susceptible to manipulation. Lord Henry takes advantage of that opportunity and gives Dorian the yellow book; this book opens up the world of hedonism and aestheticism which eventually turns his young life into an eternal oblivion of misery. Dorian develops a fear of aging so he tries to live his life as if it was his last day on earth.
The narrator in ATTH, killed because he claimed the old man’s eyes resembled that of a vulture’s and that he felt uncomfortable because he also claimed that whenever they fell on him, his “blood ran cold”. Though the motive was not because of hatred or wealth; “I loved the old man…For his gold I had no desire”, it was more than just his eyes that the narrator despised. He could have used a quicker method of killing, instead of haunting the old man for eight days, and enlisting fear into him till his last breath. “I knew that that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise…His fears had been ever since growing upon him.” The protagonist in each literature share the same selfish and irrational characteristics; to take away a good leader from it’s people and replace it with a dictator is a selfish and irrational act. Taking away someone else’s life