Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

Jarna Ware

American Literature TR 2-3:15

Professor Michael

April 21, 2016

“The Tell-Tale Heart” Research Paper

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story where the narrator tries to convince the readers of his sanity. Throughout the story the narrator says he is not insane while giving reasons to why he is not. The narrator wanted to prove his sanity because he murdered the old man for being afraid of his eye. While telling the readers about the event and trying to prove his sanity, the narrator begins to show psychological aspects from Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche which include the id, ego, and superego.

According to Psychology and Life, “the id is the unconscious part of the personality that represents

the internalization of society’s values standards and morals, it is governed by the pleasure principle which is the unregulated search for gratification, the ego is the aspect of the personality involved self-preservation activities and in directing instinctual drives and urges into appropriate channel, it is governed by the reality principle which puts the reasonable choices before pleasurable demands, and the superego is the aspect of personality that represents the internalization of society’s values, standards, and morals, it includes the ego ideals” (Gerrig 365). The id represents the thoughts and personalities that go on inside of a person’s mind. It is acting on impulse without looking at if it is really possible, liked by society, and whether or not it is morally accepted. The ego chooses an action that will go with the impulses from the id without undesirable consequences. The superego is the voice inside your conscious telling you what you should and should not do. It is the view a person has on what kind of person we should become. The story mainly focuses on the narrator’s ego, but the id and the superego is shown through the story as well.
The ego is first presented in the first paragraph of “The Tell-Tale Heart” when the narrator says, “The disease has sharpened my senses not destroyed them, not dulled them.

Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard many things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (Poe 92). It is the ego because if a person was insane then they would not be able to tell the story of a murder that was committed. The narrator is capable of telling the reader’s about why he killed the old man, how he killed the old man, and where the old man’ s body

was.
Pritchard said, “The narrator is an egocentric (self-centered) who derives from cruelty” (145). The narrator wants to be happy and not afraid, so he gets rid of the old man’s eye by murdering the old man. The narrator justifies the murder of the old man because at the time he does not believe that he is harming the old man, but just getting rid of the eye. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” said, “I think it was the eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 92). This shows the readers that the narrator egocentric. He has an obsession with the old man’s eye and the meaning it has for him that he does not care about the old man’s life anymore. The narrator shows confidence and pride when telling the policemen about the murder of the old man. “But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work!” (Poe 92). Ki supported that the narrator was confident and an egocentric with ego-evil. The ego-evil is defined by Ki as being about “the self’s over identification with its views and interests, which easily leads to a narcissistic denigration of the other and a violation of universal law” (25). In the end it was the narrator’s ego that caused him to confess the murder to the policemen because he felt like he was being mocked. “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed... it is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe 96).
The id was shown in “The Tell-Tale Heart” when the old man murdered the old man. He did not want to, but his unconscious mind was telling the narrator that he had to kill the old man in order to get rid of the eye. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire” (Poe 92). The narrator wanted to be satisfied, so he was unable to stop the urge to kill the old man to kill the eye. The id seeks immediate happiness of an impulse. Canario research the idea that the murder of the old man was the narrator’s rationalized dream. Canario used the ideas of the “indefinite extension of subjective time” and “the murderer’s psychological identification with the man he kills” (195) to identify that the events of the murder being a nightmare. If the events that occurred were the narrator’s dreams then it shows how the unconscious mind was working to cause him to actually kill the old man. According to Canario, “The narrator is reporting the events of a nightmare rather than actual events is not immediately discernible because the narrator is unable to separate the reality from imagination” (197). The id has to do with what is real and what is not. The narrator was unable to tell what was real and imaginary. When the narrator told the policemen that he could hear the old man’s heart beat, he was unaware that it was not the old man’s heart beating.
The superego played a role in “The Tell-Tale Heart” when the narrator would go into the old man’s room and watch him.

“...every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened, oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head” (Poe 92). This is the superego because the id wanted to satisfy the needs of the narrator by getting rid of the eye, but the superego was stopping him from acting. The narrator had no problems with the old man, but he would watch him sleep because he was afraid that the eye would hurt him. Every night the narrator went into the old man’s room to see, but could not do anything because he could not see the eye since the old man’s eyes were closed. If it were not for the superego the narrator would have killed the old

man.
Ki said, “The biblical truths that humans love to impose their views on others and fail to notice the plank in their own eyes” (25). The narrator wanted the readers to see why he killed the old man and prove his sanity, but was not able to understand that he was hurting himself by doing so. The narrator was able to stop the urges to kill the old man because he could not see the eye, but he could not see that the eye was only a part of the old man and he should just get over the fear and accept the old man for him and not his eye.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” was driven by his id, ego and superego. He was driven by his id because he wanted to get rid of the fear of the eye, the ego was when he confessed his acts, and the superego was when he would go into the room of the old man and watch him sleep. Research has shown that the narrator was mostly driven by his ego to kill the old man and confess the murder. The way the narrator tells the story and the confidence in the way he talks about the murder shows the egocentric personality. Since he tells the murder the way he does it makes the readers think he did not care about the old man as long as he gets rid of the eye and does not have to be afraid anymore. The narrator actually cares about the old man, but is unable to control himself when he accidentally wakes him up. The narrator was so afraid of the eye that he had to kill the old man to protect himself. He did not want to kill the man, he just wanted to kill the eye. The eye could not be killed without killing the man.
The narrator wanted to find something wrong with the old man, so he could have a reason to get rid of the eye. The narrator knew that the only way to get rid of the eye was to get rid of the old man. He was able to stop himself for a while because of his superego, but in the end the narrator’s id caused him to kill the old man because of the fear of the eye. When reading “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the readers think that the narrator is insane because he is trying to justify murdering the old man. The narrator is not a mad man, but he is a man that was driven to kill because he was afraid. In order for the narrator to not be in fear anymore, his id was working to seek satisfaction, which involved killing the old man.
I believe that fear can drive a person to do things that they would not normally do. The narrator was afraid and wanted to not be afraid anymore. The fear of the narrator drove him to kill the old man. Being afraid of something and having to be around the fear caused the narrator to have anxiety. The narrator really cared about the old man and would not do anything to harm him, but when the old man woke up the narrator felt like he would be attacked by the eye.