How Does Edgar Allan Poe's Use Of Internal Conflict

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“’Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! --here, here! –it is the beating of his hideous heart!’” The narrator’s guilty conscience drives him to admitting his crime to the police by uncovering the dismembered body in the resolution because all he could hear was the beating of a dead man’s heart inside his head. The conflicted narrator is so fearful of the old man’s “vulture” eye because it is unfamiliar to him that he carefully plans to murder the man, thus, rid him of the eye forever. Because he has such a strong hatred towards the eye, the narrator slaughters the elderly man in his sleep, but he soon regrets it because his guilty conscience overcomes him and he confesses everything to the authorities. …show more content…

Internal conflict is used in this story to show the narrator’s private thoughts and feelings. This literary device can be found in the exposition of the plot. At this point in the story, the narrator carefully plans on assassinating the old man, not because he hated him, in fact, he claims to love him. The narrator begins to describe the elderly man’s “vulture” eye and his inner thoughts as, “He had the eye of a vulture –a pale blue, 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, pg. 13) When the narrator illustrates how he only wanted to kill the man because of the eye, but for no other reason, it shows how he wasn’t thinking responsibly. Internal conflict is used throughout the story to show he was becoming more insane. Without having consequences in mind, his fear drives him to do something he will regret soon after. All in all, while internal conflict shows how the narrator was acting irrational, symbolism displays how his guilty conscience overcomes

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