Edgar Allen Poe's Tale-Tell Heart

Had he gone mad? This is not to say that he is angry, instead to describe that he has indeed gone crazy, but how does he go crazy and not at the same time? The answer is: he does not, it is impossible. In the Tale-Tell Heart the narrator begins by stating, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” (Poe 29) This, to give us the impression he is not crazy later to prove through his words and actions he is in fact crazy. Although the narrator portrays himself as not crazy later to describe how he inevitably is we can describe this work as nothing less than brilliance. Although, he was calm to tell the story and he would like to have convinced you otherwise, through his tone and style

First, his feeling satisfied and relaxed without being vexed by the heart beating rules out the possibility that he is hearing his own heart beating out of guilt or nervousness, a point that gains continuous textual support in what follow in the tale. Second, although one person’s hearing another person’s heart beating with a heavy bed in between sounds impossible in reality, the description of the protagonists examining the corpse and placing his “hand” upon the heart to feel its pulsation is perfectly in keeping with our experiences of the word, and thus ‘s hearing the old man’s heart beating. In other words, Poe ingeniously makes a fantastic fictional face credible trough related realistic details. This move paves the way for the crucial denouement, in which the protagonists hearing the beating of the old man’s heart is repeated virtually verbatim, and in which the fact that the old man is dead (no matter now in heaven or in hell) echoes with the narrators claim at the beginning of the tale: “I heard all thins in the heave and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.” In Poe’s fantastic fictional world, for the man who’s sense of hearing is “over acute,” it seems to make no difference whether the sound is on earth or in heaven/hell. (Shen

Shen also goes on to quote a critic Vincent Buranelli referring to Poe’s work states “the terrible deeds that abound there are matters of psychology, abnormal psychology not of ethics.” (Shen 325.) The narrator comes off as showing signs of being paranoid or even schizophrenic. The idea that the narrator helps to confirm that the heartbeat sound is coming from the old man and not himself is due to his sense of calmness this unique point in showing the state of mind of the narrator. If he was in fact sane and not mad, he could not possibly be calm after committing such a horrific murder. He makes the assumption it has somehow brought him peace if only for a moment.

While schizophrenia could be a factor there are other explanations as to why the narrator committed the murder, Holly Pritchard