- nervous- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am…” Then later says in the same paragraph, “… observe how healthily- how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” He is obsessive and emotionally unstable, and is so delusional that he is detached from his own anxiety. When he discusses his target- an old, innocent man, it makes the reader wonder why he wants to kill the old man. He says, ‘I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.’ He later explains, “I think it was his eye!
He waits quietly for the old man to sleep so that he can kill him, however the old man’s eye is always closed, so there is no ill feeling towards him. “But I found the eye was always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man that vexed me, but his Evil Eye.” (Poe 413) Critic Charles E. May has an interesting take on the situation with why the narrator hates his eye so much “The eye is interpreted not as an organ of vision but as the homonym “I.” Thus, what the narrator ultimately wants to destroy is the self, and he succumbs to this urge when he could no longer contain his overwhelming sense of guilt. The narrator has completely
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is totally unreliable. We are questioning his sanity from the very beginning of the story. He goes out of his way to make us believe he is not mad while he is telling the story, and tells us about going out of his way to make sure others believe in his sanity. Another thing he does to make us question his sanity and reliability is that he claims to hear things a normal person would not be able to hear. And he kills an old man for no other reason than because his eye makes “his blood run cold”.
Madness and the Subsequent Dismal Ending Within “The Tell-Tale Heart” our unnamed Narrator displays many qualities of madness, which inevitably lead to his dismal ending. The Narrator shows symptoms of madness through his seemingly unprovoked malice towards the old man he had claimed to have no quarrel with. After appearing to be caught by police in an exert from the opening of the chronicle, the Narrator attempts to prove his sanity; “but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not dulled them. .
Cuffe 1 Ameer Cuffe Professor Parmentier English Comp. II 25 January 2012 Short Story Response Essay Poe's story, "The Tell-Tale Heart" was a very mysterious and frightening story. It was mysterious in the fact that you didn't know really have a clear understanding of the killer's actual identity. You didn't know his/her race,gender, or ethinicity. Poe's story really makes you think about modern society's own sanity and mortality.
In Matthew10:29 it says “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Comparatively, Hamlet is not afraid of his Uncle Claudius, but he is afraid of God. It is evident that Hamlet knows that God is the one “who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” And some characters like Claudius fear both man and God. And others like Laertes dear neither, man nor God. God is feared through the lives of some characters and not feared through the lives of others.
* When Zaroff says “Surely your experiences in the war—,” Rainsford does not even let him finish before saying “Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder.” * He continues to say “Thank you, I’m a hunter, not a murderer.” * Zaroff talks constantly about his hunts and how they bored him overtime. His ability to hunt humans turned him into the monster that he is. He is a lot like Rainsford in the beginning in having no remorse for the animals he hunts, including humans. Which is exactly why he is not like Rainsford in the end. Zaroff never had the chance to be the hunted and therefore does not know the definition of fear.
Chillingworth, a man of age and wisdom, has a dark side that many don’t see. His shoulders are hunched and deformed making him look almost as evil as he actually was. He refuses to admit to be married to Hester because he wants to get his revenge in silence. “Sooner or later, he must needs be mine,” is Chillingworth’s way of saying that he is committing his life to finding this man and killing him. He sat in jail with Hester and made her promise to keep their marriage a secret.
So the true causes of evil are her father trapping her and keeping her away from people and men so long that she literally ends up crazy. Her father was apparently a cruel old man who never wanted his daughter to find true love and move away from him. “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such.” (48) “So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.” (49, 50) These two quotes show that her father was a real evil man who never saw any man well enough for his daughter and by the time she was thirty she was still single and really did not have a clue what she had been through and that she
This is impossible, so why does he think he hears this? It seems like he is living half in his own world, as if his thoughts become reality to him in a matter of seconds. Or maybe he hearing the heartbeat of the dead old man is his guilt speaking to him? He never disliked the old man, actually he was very fond of him. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.” “I think it was his eye!