Tell tale heart essay

If you were a mad man would you admit it? “Tell tale heart” has a narrator that says he is completely sane. But the question is , do you trust him? If somebody is insane they usually believe the opposite of the truth. The author makes it your choice whether to believe that the narrator is insane or sane. The narrator is trying to convince us he is sane because he was smart enough to hide all the evidence of the murder. Ordinary people don’t have to convince people they are not insane. These concepts in the story are what really make you re-think the story of “Tell tale heart”.

The vulture eye is suppose to be evil. According to the narrator, he is sane for getting rid of the evidence. The vulture eye bothers the narrator with a passion. But instead of quitting his job as caretaker for the old man who possesses the eye, he takes a different route. He decides to murder the old man. “ I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.” Of course he would think of this act as perfectly normal; to break the law. As long and the truth was never revealed and it all stayed a secret. As you can see this narrator is not reliable. In my opinion he is insane because he thinks he is regular when he is nowhere close. The vulture eye represents evil and fear. This is the reason the narrator ends up killing the old man in the first place; because of his evil eye. The eye needed to go and the simple solution in his mind, is to rid of the old man. This is a tragic event but does not declare if it is a tragedy or not.

Irony is a story that is unrealistic. This could be a story from unicorns to vampires as long as it could not happen in real life. “ Tell tale heart” is an Irony because when the narrator hears the heartbeat, he assumes it is the old man coming back to haunt him. In real life this would never happen unless it was hallucination. Most people would either say that it was the narrator’s imagination or his sickness coming into play. The heartbeat represents the fall of the narrator. He reaches his goal and just as he is about to get away with it the heart starts to beat. This makes him feel guilty but can’t control himself while the police are still around. The heart beat symbolizes that in the end the old man wins, because the narrator is caught. Another unrealistic characteristic of the story would be the police. If this was a true story the police would search the perimeter even more than they did in the story. If the narrator was worrying they would have noticed because he was not acting normal. Not that he acted normal in the first place; but the police would have become suspicious of the narrator. Also they would have been less gullible. If a neighbor heard a scream they would never believe it was the narrator in his sleep. But back then, when the story was placed, most things were left without further investigation. Today we would have done everything differently like searching and questioning. Every fact points to Irony. The author made this story and Irony for a reason.

The author of “Tell tale heart” seems disturbed to write such a wretched story. If you researched Edgar Allen Poe you would find that his past life was very tragic. When Edgar was very young both of his parents died. This happens to many kids at young ages, but they eventually get over it and move on with their lives. Unfortunately, Edgar never recovered from this catastrophic incident. After his parents had died he was adopted by the Allen family. The mother was loving of Edgar and the only reason he was treated so well. The father thought otherwise of Edgar. When you get adopted it is usually a very happy moment after the disheartening event that put you there in the first place. It was for Edgar until his affectionate mother was snatched away from him by the wind of death. She was the only one who actually cared for him. After that, almost everything was down hill. The father put him down with every chance he got. Constantly getting negative vibes from his father, Edgar found an escape route into a world of fantasy. He started to wrote deep, dark, poems. I believe that his distressing past inflicted very much on his future. This might be why he wrote such alarming stories and poems. If his life had been happier, most of these stories would not exist.

Edgar Allen Poe had a diverse perspective on everything. He liked to put a twist on his stories endings. If his poems were happy they might not have been as good. In his stories you must look every little detail makes a difference. To truly understand his stories you must look beneath the obvious meaning. Look deeper into what it could possibly symbolize. Edgar Allen Poe was disturbed, but this is what made his pieces so interesting.