The Tell Tale Heart Guilt Essay

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a roman stoic philosopher, once said, “Every guilting person is his own hangman.” This quote is a perfect example of what occurred in “The Tell Tale Heart”. Basically, it means that when someone is guilty they will be the ones who will turn themselves in. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” is told through the eyes of a madman (the narrator) who commits a murder. While speaking with the police, a chilling heartbeat is sensed by the narrator and he ends up confessing. In the short story “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, readers learn is that when someone does something wrong or unethical, the guilt will catch up to them in one way or another, no matter what they do to try and suppress it. At the beginning of the story, the narrator explains his motives for killing the old man. He says that it wasn’t the old man himself, but his eye. “Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me... For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!” (Poe 1). This scene shows that the narrator did not have any hate for the old man, it was only his eye that had disturbed him greatly. The author uses thoughtshots and show don’t tell to illustrate the narrator’s motives for murdering the old man. Poe showed how the eye vexed him by saying, “Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran …show more content…
It could be simply telling a lie or ruining a life changing moment for someone. However, the author’s message in “The Tell Tale Heart” means much more than that. Even if the narrator was not mentally ill and had more of a thought out plan, he would have still felt guilty for taking the life of an innocent person. The narrator proves that no matter what you do to suppress your guilt, it will always find a way back to you. Since the narrator chose to kill the old man, his guilt was worse than anything he has ever felt before in his