Mental illnesses. There are many different ways to see if someone has one, especially when there is evidence at every corner and in between everything they say. But to ask someone who is more mentally unfit compared between two of Edgar Allen Poe’s characters from his two well known stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask Of Amontillado”, they would surely choose the narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart. This is said because the murder of the old man, in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, was much more brutal than Fortunato’s death in, “The Cask Of Amontillado”, because of the way the murders were planned out, and by the way the narrator's killed each of the men. Each of their reasonings to kill these people where justified by their own personal choices and because they wanted to do so.
The narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart” smothered the old man with the bedcovers to kill him. “Still his heart was beating; but I smiled as I felt that success was near. For many minutes that heart continued to beat; but at last the beating stopped. The old man was dead. I took away the bedcovers and held my ear over his heart. There was no sound. Yes. He was dead! Dead as a stone. His eye would trouble me no more!” (Poe 66). He was proud of “successfully” getting rid of the old man's vulture like eye. The
…show more content…
Narrator despised the eye of the old man and he describes the eye as something more sinister than it should seem. “His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it”(Poe). And, “When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!” (Poe 64). The eye of the old man was the only reason he killed the man. Also, a big part of saying if the man is mentally ill or not is the way that he killed and disposed of the old man. Not long afterwards, he cut the old man up limb by limb and stored him in the floorboards. When the police came he was very very sure of himself and was very confident that the police would not suspect a thing, and that they would believe his story. While waiting for the police to search the premises, the narrator started to hear the old man's heartbeat through the floorboards. But the old man is dead isn't he? There was no way at all that his heart could keep beating after the precautions that the narrator took to kill him. Now, he can tell it was the old man's heart because, it resembled the ticking of an old grandfather clock. He kept hearing it and it would not stop, and when he sees the police staring at him he starts to believe that they are mocking him! He broke down with the weight of the old man's heart and the feeling of guilt, and falls to his knees, admitting the fact that he did indeed kill the old man. but that he can still hear the man's ‘hideous’ heart, still beating and mocking him just beneath his own two feet. Now the other narrator from “The Cask Of The Amontillado”still knew what he was doing was wrong but he did what he did because he was just plain sadistic. He wanted to induce torture to Fortunado but he did not want to see him die because the torture is all he really wanted to see. “Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power"(Poe). He mocked Fortunato because the man was screaming inside the makeshift room, but to show him that there was no one to hear him scream but his killer, the narrator started screaming himself. “A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I approached the wall; I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamour grew still.”(Poe). The narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” knew the old man personally and was even nice to the old man a whole week before he made the kill.
The narrator had no harsh feelings for the old man though. He even said he was a nice person,“And every morning I went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice I asked him how he had slept. He could not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept”(Poe 65), but the only concern the narrator had, was getting rid of the man's evil eye. The old man's eye is the stressor of the narrator's mental breakdown. If the old man's eye was not “vulture like” then the death if the old man would most likely have not occurred in the
end. Also with the sadistic tendencies of the narrator from the “Cask of Amontillado” the man would most likely die in there. “I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!”(Poe). He just wanted to show power to the man, and this is the only way he could.
In the Edgar Allan Poe stories "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" the most prominent and important themes that are used are death, logic, and irony. The characters of the narrator and Montresor in these stories are both coldblooded murders who kill for selfish and inane reasons who firmly believe that their actions are justified even though their justifications only make sense in their own minds. They both try to convince their audience that they are sane by explaining to them their reasons for killing their victims and admitting how they did it, which only helps to prove their insanity. The narrator and Montresor are similar in that they both have impaired senses of judgment encouraged by perverse morals and believe that the horrible things that they do are justifiable.
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” murders an elderly man because he is fearful of the man’s “evil eye.” “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 37). The narrator explains that he is haunted by the man’s eye and the only way to
The narrators of both stories are reliable. The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is reliable because he is telling a story about an event in his life he experienced first-hand. On the other hand, I feel he holds no creditability because he can’t see and accept himself as being a mad man. The narrator is disturbed by an old man’s eyes. The narrator shows this saying "I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!" (Poe 1). The old man’s eyes are described as being pale blue that has a film over it. The narrator discloses how the old man’s eyes made him feel cold. As a matter fact, the old man’s eyes frighten the narrator instilling fear for his life when he looks at them. The man
The logic the narrator provides is that he thinks the desire to murder the old man results from the man’s eye, which bothers him. He says, “When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye, a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!” (Poe 65). The fact that this man’s eye is what makes him very angry is such an irrelevant reason for the narrator to kill him.
In “The Cask of Amontillado,” the reader can tell the narrator is unreliable. The narrator shows this through his lack of reason for killing Fortunato. Also, the narrator indicates that he is unreliable when he laughs as he kills Fortunato; only a madman would laugh while killing someone. The narration of the story makes it so the reader questions why the narrator killed Fortunato. Another question most readers have is, why is the narrator sharing this story? Also, readers commonly ask themselves, what has happened to make him share this story? The narrator says, “For half of a century no mortal has disturbed them” (Poe 113). This statement by the narrator may make a reader feel that Fortunato’s body has been moved or found. Likewise, it may make a reader feel that the narrator is bragging to someone about getting away with murder because he is possibly on his
In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, there are only five characters mentioned in the story: the narrator, the old man, and three police officers, none of whom is ever named. Throughout the story, the narrator tells the audience over and over that he is not mad. He becomes obsessed with trying to prove that he is not a madman and eventually goes crazy in the end. He tells the story of how he kills the old man after seven nights of watching him sleep. He has nothing against the old man and actually likes him, but it is the old man’s pale blue eye with a film over it that overwhelms the narrator with anger. This is when he decides to rid of this “vulture eye,” by murdering the old man. After finally finishing what he had set out to do, three policemen show up because of a complaint about a shriek. The narrator assures them that it was him that had shrieked because of a nightmare and asks the officers to sit with him. While talking with them, confident that they knew nothing, he starts to hear a noise increasingly get louder. He eventually cannot take it anymore and
In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase from the first paragraph, "The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all 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." This shows that we are in his thou...
Many people have attempted to rationalize the meaning of the single "evil eye." Some people have attempted to relate the old man to a Cyclops. However, I see this eye from a Christian point of view. The eye is not "evil" in the sense of the devil instead in my humble opinion it is the eye of God. I agreed with B. D. Tucker. The first thing I attempted to do, was relate the Cyclops theory however, this did not sit well with me. The reason the Cyclops theory does not fit the story is that in the second paragraph Poe writes, "One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture" (Kennedy 34). The mythical Greek creature had only o...
The story opens with the narrator explaining his sanity after murdering his companion. By immediately presenting the reader with the textbook definition of an unreliable narrator, Poe attempts to distort his audience’s perceptions from the beginning. This point is further emphasized by his focus on the perceived nexus of madness; the eye. Poe, through the narrator, compares the old man’s eye to the eye of a vulture. Because vultures are birds that prey on the weak and depend on their eyesight to hunt, it is easy to deduct that Poe’s intention is to connect the narrator’s guilt and his interpretation of events in his life. By equating the eye to the old man’s ability to see more than what others see, Poe allows the narrator to explore the idea that this eye can see his weakness; the evil that lies in the narrator’s heart and that which makes him unacceptable. Knowing that he is damaged makes the narrato...
First off, Poe did an excellent job of hiding the physical identity of the narrator by not including a gender, name, age or even features of what the narrator looks like. Not being able to understand what the character looks like is a bit aggravating because knowing the gender you could come up with other possible motives for killing him other than his eye. The narrators relationship is never explained but we have to assume that he has some type of relationship with the old man. I think that was Poe's intention so the reader could have a complete understanding that people can commit crimes without having a reason. The narrator is not secretive when expressing his thoughts towards the old man. For example the narrator says " Object there was none. Passion there was none. I love the old man. He had never wrong me. He had never given me insult." (42 Backpack Literature). This quote was important to emphasize the point that the narrator had no real motive to kill the old man and all of his reasoning was hidden inside his head. Being secretive helps explain other ch...
In both stories, the chief characters plan in great detail the actions they will take to rid themselves of that which haunts them. The narrator of "The Telltale Heart" is the killer, and he explains in the telling of his story how he felt no ill will toward the old man, but how it was the old man's pale eye that caused his "blood (to) run cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - (he) made up (his) mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid (himself) of the eye forever."[382] Later, he reflects on how meticulously he goes about entering the old man's room, planning the murder. "For seven nights - every night at midnight" he enters the sleeping chamber.[383] Prince Prospero, in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," decides to take with him many friendly "knights and dames"[386] from his court and hide away in secl...
At the end of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe’s fascination with death is apparent when the narrator ruthlessly killed an old man with a disturbing eye, but felt so guilty that he confessed to the police. The narrator dismembered the old man’s body and hid them in the floor, confident that they were concealed. However, when the police came to investigate, the narrator heard a heart beating and began to crack under the pressure. Overcome with guilt, he confessed that he murdered him and pulled up the floorboards. The narrator exclaimed, “But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision!” (“Heart” 4). Although the narrator was calm and confident at first, the guilt he experienced drove him mad, causing...
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of ridding his life of the man's "Evil Eye" (34). Although afflicted with overriding fear and derangement, the narrator still acts with quasi-allegiance toward the old man; however, his kindness may stem more from protecting himself from suspicion of watching the old man every night than from genuine compassion for the old man.
“He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his 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 1)
On the surface, the physical setting of The Tell Tale Heart is typical of the period and exceedingly typical of Poe. The narrator and the old man live in an old, dark house: '(for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers)'; (Poe 778). Most of the story takes place at night: 'And this I did for seven long nights-every night just at midnight?'; (778). The physical aspect is not the most important component of setting for this analysis. More important are the mental and emotional settings. This clearly explains the personality of the narrator. One can assume the narrator is insane. He freely admits to his listener that he is '?-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous?'; (777). But he then asks, '?but why will you say that I am mad?'; (777). He also admits that, 'The disease had sharpened my senses?'; (777). If not insanity, what disease does he speak of? The reason for his actions was one of the old man's eyes: '?-a pale blue eye, with a film over it'; (777). This is easily recognizable to the reader as an eye with cataract on it. This is nothin...