Reflection Of Eye In Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

Relief, is what the narrator feels as he rids himself of the “vulture eye.” Freedom, is the narrator’s goal via murder. The opposite, is what he gains. The quote above clarifies that the narrator revels in his accomplishment as he gets away with murder undetected.Thus leaving him free from consequence, or so he thought. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, an unnamed man is haunted by the “pale blue” eye of an elderly man and is fixated on freeing himself from the vulture eye in the most efficient way he knows how. Seeing the old man’s eye evokes unwanted emotions in the narrator and creates the sadistic need to annihilate the old man solely to unburden himself. But, once he has completed the murder, he is filled with guilt and anxiety which eventually cause him to confess his sins to the police. This leads the reader to the conclusion that the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” saw his true self in the old man’s eye and could not live with it, which in turn pilots to the murder of the old …show more content…
For instance, when the eye is revealed, the man is consumed with feelings he is unprepared to deal with, which leads him to the inescapable desire to kill the old man. For example, the narrator says while describing his previous visits to the old man’s bedroom, “I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work,”(Poe) meaning that because the eye was not open, and because the narrator was not able to see his true self, he was not able to follow through with his plan. The narrator admits this when he says “For it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye”(Poe). By saying this, he is admits that the old man’s eye provokes certain emotions that bother and or vex him. In reality, however, it is the emotions, that are being brought on by the image of his true self which he