Poe’s narrator appears to be very anonyms. Neither a gender nor name is provided for the reader. It is clear that the narrator, whom appears to be a male, is obsessed with the old man, and appears to suffer from monomania and paranoia. It is seen in the way he plan his murder, and how he is hallucinating in the end of the story, when he hears the heart beat. The narrator tells us little about himself “Nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am” He also seems to always try and convince the reader that he is not insane “I heard many things in hell.
When the narrator is the protagonist and tells the story from a personal account it makes the overall impact of the story more vivid. The narrator in this story is mentally challenged and adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing that he or she is not mad; He tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. He begins the story inquiring, "How then am I mad?" and states, "Observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story" (Paragraph 1). The narrator tries to prove how sane he really is before the reader has read enough to make any kind of judgment about him.
From the very first line of the story we can see that the sanity of the narrator is questionable. He says, “True! —nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am: but why will you say that I am mad?” His sanity is questioned from the very beginning. Then he goes on to describe the old mans “vulture” eye that eventually drives him to murder. This apparently is the only thing that drives him to do so.
He insists that he is not a madman for he carried out his scheme artfully like a criminal mastermind. He admits to spying on the man every night and then pretending as though everything is normal during the day for an entire week before deciding that it’s time to execute his plan. However, on the eighth night, the old man wakes up and cries out in terror when he senses a foreign presence in his bedroom. The narrator patiently stalks him like a predator preparing to pounce. Although the narrator can sympathise with the blood-curdling fear that the old man felt, he experiences some sort of sadistic pleasure in observing the man.
I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!” (Poe, Heart 657). Here the narrator is saying the only reason he murdered the old man was because of the evil eye, which he couldn’t bare to see for another day; as they lived in the same house. This is quite frightening to think about because everyone has their own imperfections but it doesn’t mean that people who cannot stand these traits will kill people because of them. “Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall- resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon” (Poe, Pit 3).
The Tell-Tale Heart Before beginning his account, the unnamed narrator claims that he is nervous and oversensitive but not mad, and offers his calmness in the narration as proof of his sanity. He then explains how although he loved a certain old man who had never done him wrong and desired none of his money, the narrator could not stand the sight of the old man's pale, filmy blue eye. The narrator claims that he was so afraid of the eye, which reminds him of a vulture's, that he decided to kill the man so he would no longer have to see it. Although the narrator is aware that this rationalization seems to indicate his insanity, he explains that he cannot be mad because instead of being foolish about his desires, he went about murdering the old man with "caution" and "foresight." In the week before the murder, the narrator is very kind to the old man, and every night around midnight, he sneaks into the old man's room and cautiously shines a lantern onto the man's eye.
Grant tells Jefferson that he is more of a man that he could ever be, and that we all need him. In Jefferson diary he admits his thoughts. He talks about how it is difficult for him to sleep at night, because all he dreams about is going through the door of his execution. He confesses why he acted the way he did in the beginning to Grant, and Miss Emma, he says it was because no one ever told him that they loved him so he wasn’t sure how to do the same. He confesses that he cries a night because he is scared, and because Grant has been so good to him.
The narrator in “Tell-Tale Heart” lost his composure after he murdered the old man, in contrast to when Rainsford murdered General Zaroff. After the narrator murders the old man and visitors come to the house, he still hears the heart of the old man beating. As he talks to the visitors, it seems to him that the heart beat gets louder and louder to the point where he loses self-control and admits to the deed. However, after Rainsford wins the most dangerous game he clearly keeps his serenity. Instead of showing any guilt, Rainsford actually seems to be more at peace after he pulls the trigger.
Therefore, this is when Jekyll begins to shut out Utterson along with everyone else and still does for a significant amount of time. During his isolation, Jekyll begins to realize he no longer has control of Hyde when he goes to bed himself and wakes up as Hyde. It’s not as easy as he thought to be rid of Hyde.At this point of the story, Jekyll’s addiction has gone too far and it is too late for him to try and regain control when Hyde murders again. This process is the same for an addict; they continually abuse until a significant negative event occurs and try to recover, though it is very difficult. Jekyll’s isolation continues for weeks as he doesn’t leave home and no one visits him.
I don’t care. So long as I can be alone.’” (243) John feels used by Bernard as his tool to get the girls, and he has had enough of the fingers pointed at him and words said behind his back. After all he has been through John is still unable to get away from the mindset that he has to be alone, and chooses to leave the new world in favor of a solitary lighthouse. There, like the “men” on the reservation, John whips himself daily as people watch him like some sort of spectacle. Eventually John cracks and goes insane for a moment resulting in a blackout; “He lay awake for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered—everything” (258).