A Story of a Madman or a Paranoid Murderer - 1310 Words

A Story of a Madman or a Paranoid Murderer? Often referred to as the â€Å"architect of the modern short story,† Edgar Allen Poe paints a vivid picture of a seemingly insane man murdering his elderly roommate in the short story, â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† (â€Å"Biography†). It is a great example of Poe’s style, with the major themes being insanity, paranoia, and murder. â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† is a short story written with the intent of focusing on the psyche of the main character. Since it is told from a first-person point of view, the audience is able to see what the protagonist is thinking and how his plan of this murder develops (â€Å"Biography†). This story might just seem like a tale of insanity, guilt, and murder, but upon further examination, it is a tale of moral deficiency, superhuman ability, paranoia, and ironic dissemblance. In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart†, Poe’s use of the unreliable narrator is very well executed, because the lack of certain details adds to the suspense of this grim story. The reader is able to focus on the raw details of the murderous plot and the events that follow, in addition by leaving out certain details, it leads to some interesting questions. Who is the narrator’s audience that he is confessing the details of his crime to? What is the disease that he speaks of in the beginning? Is guilt the main reason for his confession at the end of the story? Perhaps the most obvious question raised after reading â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart,† is whether the main character actuallyShow MoreRelatedThe Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe1630 Words   |  7 PagesThe Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It is told by anonymous narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man wit h a filmy vulture-eye (cataract eye), as the narrator calls it. The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer dismembers the body and hides it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator s guilt manifests itself in the form of the sound ( hallucinatory) of the old man sRead MoreThemes Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde And Macbeth1322 Words   |  6 Pagestheir goal as they act without care of the consequences, which result in violent battles with others. Jekyll, when he is transformed into Hyde, does not have concern for what happens to others. Enfield, a cousin of Utterson, relays to Utterson the story of how Hyde hurts a young girl. â€Å"The man [who tramples] calmly over the child’s body and [leaves] her screaming on the ground† is Hyde, whom Enfield envisions in his head whenever walking by the corner of the incident (Stevenson 7). Hyde, being theRead MoreThe Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allen Poe1427 Words   |  6 PagesGhoshal 27 September 2015 The Tell Tale Heart In â€Å"The Tell Tale Heart†, by Edgar Allen Poe, the reader is presented with the short story of a madman who narrates his murder of an old man because, â€Å"he had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it† (Poe 105). The narrator has thought thoroughly about his plan to murder this old man, and the murderer then stashes his body underneath the floorboards. Eventually, his guilt overcomes him and he starts hallucinating that he hears theRead MoreThe Journey of the Mind in Shakespeares Hamlet757 Words   |  3 Pagescircumstances surrounding this lead into the encompassing self-tribulation that will be the theme of his journey, with his inner shifting subconsciousness affecting the outer events of his journey. The journey’s catalyst was his decision to seek the murderer of the prior king, leading into his confrontation with the elderly seer and planting the first seeds of doubt. Going from his assuredness in addressing the people prior, we n ow have insight to the depths of his pride at even the slightest hint thatRead MoreThe Cask Of Amontillado, By Edgar Allan Poe2376 Words   |  10 Pageshave taken different positions on the motives and sanity for the narratives in Edgar Allan Poe’s, â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† (1846) and â€Å"Tell-Tale Heart† (1843). Some view the stories as having a motive and the characters as being completely sane. While others say that there were no reasons for the murders in both of these stories, but came to the conclusion that the characters were psychotic and just ill- natured people. Also, they believe that a simple insult should not cause a person to kill. ThoseRead MoreLolita by Vladimir Nabokov1627 Words   |  7 PagesThe narrator of a story is the person or object who is telling the story from, typically, their point of view. The narrator is normally a character within the story, who provides a further explanation as to what is occurring throughout the piec e of literature. It is important to have a reliable narrator to tell the story. An unreliable narrator tends to lead to doubts on whether or not the story is being told exactly how it happened and being told without bias. An unreliable narrator can leave theRead MoreComparison of Edgar Allen Poes The Tell-Tale Heart and Stephen Kings Misery2211 Words   |  9 Pages--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. (Poe, 1843) Poe states that he does not know how he first acquired the idea but that once it had entered into his mind that the idea overtook him. He had no reason for what he had done and in fact, he loved the old man and the old man had neverRead More Helter Skelter - Manson vs. the Myth Essay1631 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"I walk your streets and am right out there with you,† boasted serial killer Charles Manson almost twenty years after being sentenced to life in prison (Emmons 227). Most people would probably dismiss this statement as the delusional ranting of a madman, yet, were they to examine the attention of and, possibly, the influence on society that Manson has had and continues to have, they would be forced to admit that there is some truth to Manson’s proclamation. [2] When Manson and his so-calledRead MoreThe Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe2132 Words   |  9 Pagesâ€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† Theme The short story â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allan Poe, is told from the point of view of a man who, who has an ever growing obsession to kill this old blind man. The story takes place with the narrator and the old man living together. The narrator is obsessed with the old man’s vulture like eyes, which he stalks every night until he takes actions into his own hands and murders the old man getting rid of his obsession. After the murdering of the old man and hiding hisRead MoreCompare and Contrast American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and the Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro Focussing on the Topic of the Unreliable Narrator3332 Words   |  14 PagesStevens. Both novels are comparable in the sense they examine the topic of failure using unreliable narrators that will do anything to escape the idea that they are failures. A popular debate regarding American Psycho is whether Patrick Bateman is a murderer or not, certainly Bateman describes in detail of murders he commits and why he commits them, however, certain factors bring Bateman’s reliability of narration into question. Bruno Zerweck argues that due to the lack of ‘detective framework’ and ‘unintentional