Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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The personalities and behaviors of characters in the world or in stories develop drastically from the lessons others have taught them, or by enduring a difficult hardship; these experiences impact many people, including the person, as well. Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart is told in the position of a mentally unstable man who describes the murder he committed while hopelessly convincing the reader that he is sane. It is possible that the narrator was hired as a butler by the old man, and had worked for him for some time without bickering or any of the sort. Though later, the butler became intimidated by his employer’s glass eye and started to lose his mind, thus starting his maniacal plot to stalk the man so that the eye …show more content…

Evidence from the text goes to show that the butler “loved the old man and he had never wronged him [or insulted him]” (Poe, 1). The butler had a special relationship with the old man before, and said that he had nothing against him or desired any of his property. This shows that the butler did not murder his employer because of resentment, greed, or any other human sin, but of his fear of the old man’s artificial eye. What is more, the man also stated that he” very gradually made up [his] mind to take the life of the old man” (Poe, 1). The fact that he states it took him quite some time to finalize his decision tells that he was actually sane before, when he was just beginning to take notice of the hair-raising eye. The ill butler was hired by the old man when he was perfectly healthy, mentally and physically, but began to lose his sense of judgement as time passed during his …show more content…

For one, his irrationality affected the way he described his actions. As the protagonist was executing his scheme one night, he stated that he “cunningly thrusted his head [into the old man’s room], and [that] it also took [him] an hour to do so” (Poe, 3). Being that it is impractical to deftly shove one’s head into a room and having it take an hour to do so provides compelling evidence of the man’s dynamic change. The disease that caused the protagonist to lose sight of reality made him resort to murder rather than seeking less-violent solutions to his problems. Another moment in the story where the butler was delusional includes the moment where he unravels his actions of ridding the eye from his life. The man apparently decided, once and for all, to “kill the old man and close [the] eye forever” (Poe, 2). The fact that narrator decided to kill the old man because of his plain fear of the glass vulture eye shows that he is so mentally unstable that he can only rationalize through killing. His decision to kill the man, rather than to find a more logical solution to the problem, only further empowers his schizophrenia. He viewed his dilemma exceptionally, whereas he could have found a peaceful resolution to end his problem, instead of exacerbating the situation with harmful decisions. The reader can understand that it was his schizophrenia at play that made him perform the latter

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