Tell Tale Heart Research Paper

Improved Essays
Imagine being hated because of your disabilities. Then when you go out into public everyone stares at it. The narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” is sane not insane because. First, the narrator stalked the man using very good strategy. At midnight every night the narrator would go into the old man’s bedroom and shine the light directly at the “evil eye.” That is proof that the old man is completely sane. “But even yet i refrained and kept still.”(The Tell Tale Heart pg. 204) Next, the narrator used a lot of cautions in the 8 day murder. For example, the narrator on the 8th night made a loud noise and stayed completely still for an hour straight shining the light directly at the “evil eye.” That is an example of how cautious the narrator

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    In “The Tell- Tale Heart”, the narrator is introduced by trying to prove his sanity to the readers. The narrator admits that due to his strong powerful sense of hearing, "he can hear all things in the heaven and in the earth and many things in hell.” This proves to us that the narrator is not focusing on reality because of his sick mind. The narrator shows a desperate need to prove his sanity to everyone by constantly reminding his readers that he is sane. He even tells a story of a pointless murder just to prove he’s not mad.…

    • 154 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The narrator displayed nothing but positive emotions towards the old man, yet he conceived the notion to murder him, which shows that he knew the difference between right and wrong. The narrator explains how cautious he was and how he crept into his room every night at midnight for seven days yet did not murder the old man because he did not see the "evil eye". At one point on the eighth night, the old man wakes up to a noise and sits up for an hour staring into the doorway to which the narrator is locked into a trance and does not move a muscle, most likely to prevent suspicion and possibly being caught. The narrator also shows his murderous arrogance by explaining to the audience that he would greet the old man every morning and ask him how his night passed, which shows the audience that he was conscious of his actions because he seemed to get gratification from the fear he was instilling in the old…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The narrator in the story “The Tell Tale Heart” is not a credible resource of information, because he is an unreliable narrator. There is no claim to back up his reasoning to murder the old man. In the first paragraph the narrator explains”the disease had sharpened my senses-- not destroyed--not dulled them”. if someone has a disease, that disease at least comes with a disability, and that disability for the narrator is a mental disease. First reason, why the narrator is not a credible source of information is, because in paragraph one the narrator states “he can hear all things in the heaven and in the Earth [and] many things in hell”.…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As can be seen in the way he sneaks into his room late at night for eight nights in a row demonstrates his obsessiveness for the old man. This also emphasizes the fact that he loves the old man, but only for his “evil eye” that results to the killing that makes the narrator unreliable. Unlike the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, because she admits the she is unwell and she could not take care of her own child because she is scared that she might do something on the baby. Also the narrator in the “Strawberry Spring”, because he was afraid to open his own trunk thinking that he might be the killer though he does not remember anything. All in all, the narrator’s obsession for the eye affects his thinking and behavior--which establishes his unreliability in the…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Since the beginning of 5000 BCE, doctors have attempted to treat the mentally ill. As we know, doctors did not treat the mentally ill like normal patients; they were tortured and experimented on. Edgar Allan Poe, writer of the gothic genre wrote The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. These short stories are narrated by unnamed characters that seem extremely unreliable and unstable. These protagonists are madmen who were able to reason but act in immoral ways.…

    • 995 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Have you ever read a short story that’s so suspenseful you start to get nervous? In the short story “A Tell Tale Heart” written by Edgar Allen Poe the main character is obsessed with a mans vulture eye and kills him over his hatred for the eye. In the short story Poe uses multiple types of authors craft to create suspense including interior monologue, hyperbole, and blocking. To begin one type of author's craft Poe uses to create suspense is hyperbole's.…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As May states in “The Tell-Tale Heart: Overview”, “Although there are ostensibly two characters in “The Tell-Tale Heart”- an old man and the younger man who lives with him- the story is really about only one character psychically split in half. ”(May 1) That character is not just the man in the story whom we claim to be paranoid and perhaps with a case of schizophrenia, but ourselves as well. The Tell-Tale Heart, separates us from our current mindset and breaks through our defense mechanisms that have so held the treasure within the dark of our minds. We are constantly torn and split in half, perhaps due to our fear, our fear of ourselves.…

    • 1730 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He constantly describes the eye to be “evil”, but the narrator is the one who is truly evil because he believed in his mental “disease” to exterminate the old man for his…

    • 974 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Brad MacFee ENGL-102-75A 12/3/2017 Essay #4 How the Tell-Tale Signs of Schizophrenia Provide a Motive for Killing “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, features a schizophrenic narrator who recounts the sequence of events leading up to the murder of an old man and his eventual confession to the murder. Throughout the story, the narrator exhibits many strange behaviors that suggest that he is quite abnormal. For example, the narrator describes his extreme vendetta against, not the old man, but his “evil eye,” (Edgar Allan Poe). By the end of the story, the narrator has a friendly conversation with the police about the old man until he begins hearing a ringing sound that he says progressively grew in volume. The increasing volume of the sound led him to ultimately lash out in confession to the murder of the old man.…

    • 1851 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While this admittedly seems plausible, the narrator of the tell-tale heart is sane because he does not have the characteristics it takes to be legally insane. Some of these characteristics are that he doesn't know what he's doing is wrong, that he unaware of surroundings, that his actions have illogical reasons or not reasons at all, that he is confused about daily life, that his emotions are above and beyond what is normally expected for a given situation, that he is unable to resist impulses. The Tell-Tale heart narrator is very sane.…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Tell-Tale Heart Thesis

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In “The Federalist No. 10” James Madison, writing under the group pen name “Publius,” addresses the problematic role of factions in popular government in order to argue against a democracy and to offer up his solution of a republic. Defining a faction as “a number of citizens… united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” (349), Madison contends that a “pure democracy” (351) cannot provide a cure for the evils of factions, but that a republic can. He proposes that there “are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction… by removing its causes… [and] by controlling its effects” (349). However, according to him the…

    • 1497 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In Mrs. Crew’s class we are reading a novel called “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Several parents and peers etc…say it is not no respectable book for our age range, but to me it is a remarkable text, filled with tons of info on how to define the horror genre. In my essay I will try and convince the several parents and peers that say it is not a respectable book for our age group, that it is a highly regarded book for our age range. First reason you should read the text is it’ll increase your imagination, so that your mind won’t be stuck on foolishness like social media, video games, or anything else that kids in our age range are addicted to. It’ll also keep your mind out of the “gutter”.…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    4. He is unreliable a narrator because he suffers from hallucinations. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" acts as if he had the selective omniscience of a third-person narrator. Approaching the old man's bed on the night of the crime, the narrator claims to know what his victim "had been…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This proves the character to be very cautious and attentive. One example in particular that stands out is when the narrator accidently wakes the old man, and says, “For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and I did not hear him lay down. He was still sitting-up; listening” (Poe105). This quote proves the killer to be very attentive.…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “ There’s a big difference between sanity and insanity,” a television show actress, Megan Gallagher, once stated. This statement can be seen by Edgar Allan Poe, with his story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” To begin with, the story started in the 1800s, a vexed butler, also the narrator of the story, was paranoid about an old man’s pale, blue “vulture eye.” The butler stalked the old man every night, when he fell asleep. Until one night, he made a slight noise that appalled the old man; the loud beating of the old man’s heart infuriated the butler, so he suffocated him, and dissected his corpse to hide the body under the planks of the wooden floor.…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays