Theme Of Insanity In The Tell Tale Heart

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Insanity is something that people keep private to the point of complete mental breakdown. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” shows this in the narrator’s frantic recollection of the night he murdered a old man, sleeping in his house. The narrator of the story is certainly conflicted with his own sanity as he tries to justify the killing. The sanity of the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” is a main conflict of the story. The narrator’s justification of the murder is an obvious window in his insanity. He declares his reasons for the night murder as the old man’s fake eye, which made his blood run cold at the sight.. He directly states, “I think it was his eye! Yes! It was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture--a pale …show more content…

The narrator only admits to the murder because he imagines he hears the old man’s dead heart beating loudly, which puts him in agony. The narrator tells of the beating heart on page 45, saying “ Yet the sound increased--and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”. They way he describes the sound is the exact same way as he describes the beating of the old man’s heart the night of his murder, which is impossible as the old man was dead at that point in the story. The narrator then believes that the policemen over his house, investigating a report of a scream by a neighbor, can also hear the beating and are mocking him by pretending they don’t hear it. He finally admits to the murder on page 46, yelling “Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!--Tear up the planks!--Here, here!--It is the beating of his hideous heart!”. The narrator is so totally convinced that the sound is not in his head that he admits the crime, believing that the police already know of the murder. The sound is a complete product of the narrator’s insanity, further proven by the torture he experiences while he hears the sound. The beating of the heart is something only a truly insane person could believe is real.
Throughout the story, it is clear that the narrator suffers from extreme mental illness. The motive for the murder, the glass eye, is so mundane

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