The Narrator of The Tell Tale Heart

Essay for English...`

Character Analysis

Several murders and massacres including the Navy Yard Shooting, the Colorado Movie Theatre attack, and the Sandy Hook massacre have been committed by a mentally ill person. Although Edgar Allen Poe lived approximately 160 years before these attacks, he dove greatly into the minds of the insane, thus revealing the nature of these attacks beforehand. In fact, his story, The Tell-Tale Heart, he shows the depth of the narrator’s insanity by also proving that he is meticulous and cunning.

One of the first signs that the narrator is insane or mentally ill is that he keeps trying to deny, or prove the reader wrong about his madness. The fact that he “(hears) all things in the heaven and in the earth” as well as “many things in hell” is questionably insane. After reading, if anyone thinks that he is not insane is probably mentally ill themselves because no sane person could hear into Heaven? If a person is still on this Earth, then they can’t see or hear Heaven. The narrator then goes on with his story about killing a man with a “Vulture Eye”. He has no reason, no motive to commit this murder, but does it “to rid (himself) of the eye forever.” Most sane people would ignore the “evil eye” or pity him, but they would not kill him.

In addition to his insanity, the narrator was extremely maticulous and obssesed with his strategy, his method, his way of killing the old man. He did the same thing “every night about midnight.” He opened “the door enough to be sufficient for (his) head,” putting “a dark lantern, all closed” so that “no light shone out,” and he “thrust in (his) head” in, taking approximately “an hour to” place his “whole head within the opening” so he can watch the sleeping old man. He did it for “seven long nights--every night, just at midnight.” By doing the same thing, every night at the same time, he shows that he is OCD-like, meticulous to the last drop of planning. If the narrator committed the murder today, he would be put on trial for premeditated murder because he planned it to the last detail. The old man also had to be awake for the narrator to kill him because “it was not the old man who vexed” him but “his Evil Eye.” He was meticulous over that “Evil Eye” or “Vulture Eye” that in order to kill the old man his eye had to be open.

The narrator was extremely cunning. Once he got the idea to murder the old man, it “haunted (him) day and night,” although it was “impossible to say how first” he got the thought. He constantly started thinking about killing the old man until he devised a way to do it. He wouldn’t let anything get in the way of it, not even the old man suspecting him, because he “spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he passed the night” to avoid suspicion of his plans. He was determined to deceive the old man into thinking he was safe. Even when he was putting his head through the door, the narrator did it slowly and cunningly as to not wake the old man up or arouse suspicion.

On the whole, the narrator is an extremely complex character that several people dismiss as mad or crazy, but there are, like most people, many facets to his character. Yes, he’s insane, but what really goes on in his mind is what Edgar Allen Poe did well with Tell-Tale Heart. The narrator is indeed similar to many murderers, but he is not just a murderer, he is a complex character that gets dismissed because of his “disease”. The narrator is not only insane, but he is meticulous, and cunning, and putting all that together is what makes this particular character an extremely dangerous murderer.  

Author's Note

What sucks is that the last page is only three words...

I don't know why the last paragraph keeps being copied like that...

Reviews

[Marie]

I can't believe this got 180 views, and nobody commented on it. I stumbled over it quite by accident. It is a well thought out, illuminating article. The narrator of this story was certanly insane, as are many murderes. They plan, they execute,and never understand the wrongness of what they have done


Edgar Allen Poe was not quite sane himself; that is probably why he wrote so well of these matters...

[Some Random Person.]

Thanks... I think most people don't comment on it because it's an essay from my English class at school. Or they don't know much about Edgar Allen Poe.

[Philip Muls]

Good insights, Interesting angle the narrator being insane. Well done.