Close Reading on "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe

Introduction

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story of a murderer who seems to be mad. As the story commences, the narrator addresses the audience and claims that he is not mad, instead, he is only nervous. He says that he will tell a story of defending his sanity and through it, he confesses that he killed an old man. The story is told by an unidentified narrator who tries convincing the reader regarding his sanity as he describes the murder committed. "The Tell-Tale heart" indicates the way obsession may turn one into madness and result in destroying the victim and others.

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In writing this short story, Poe captures the way someone who has committed murder can be in a bad state of mind. The madman cannot accept he is mad or not, rather, the activities he engages can confirm whether he is mad or not. The authors writing is also done masterfully in a way which depicts the thoughts of somebody who has been suffering from the mind. Poe assists the narrator in confirming that he is indeed mad using the tone, symbolism, and repetition in the story. Ideas of what causes the narrator to be mad have been repeated severally. Therefore, through these different literary devices, Poe assist in showing the narrator's insanity.

The tone of writing is one of the things that Poe utilizes in showing that indeed the narrator is mad. The narrator describes himself to be nervous throughout the story, and at the same time, he is excited that he can discuss the way he went to murder the old man and the preparations that he took for him not to be caught. At the beginning of the story, he said, "True! -nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am" (Baym and Robert 691)." The narrator goes from saying what makes an individual mad to the way madmen look like.

Symbolism is also used in the story in the story to confirm that the narrator is mad. The narrator's eye is symbolic. He was willing to kill the old man due to the nature of his eyes as he continually regarded them as evil. The narrator said, "Passion there was none. I loved the old man He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!" (Baym and Robert 691). Referring to the eyes as evil makes the actions taken by the narrator just because he was eradicating an evil person from this world. It is also in this part that the narrator believes that he is not mad because he made a right decision. Unfortunately, it can be confirmed from the excerpt that the eye of the old man might have just been deformed to some degree. The murder issue also shows that the narrator is mad because he only believed in his illusion that the old man's eye was connected to some evil. Therefore, the author shows how the narrator could not cope with his illusion making him kill the old man.

The narrator tells the audience the way he murdered an old man he stayed with because his eyes made him feel uncomfortable. However, he also feels sane as he admits that murder was committed. The story of the narrator makes one have emotions in the story. The narrator said, the "it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night (Baym and Robert 691)."He is not sure of where he first got the idea of killing an old man because of the eyes. Furthermore, the way in which the narrator uses haunted in the to make the audience feel that it was a serious thing.

Suspense is also used by the narrator to help in keeping the audience going. In the statement, "I had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out - "Who's there?" (Baym and Robert 693). The extreme measures which are taken by the narrator in killing the old man also contribute since it leads to the old man's death. More extreme measures are taken when the narrator says, "I kept quiet and still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime, I did not hear him lie down (Baym and Robert 693). The quote shows that the narrator took long before he killed the old man.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the narrator obsession with the old man's eye resulted in his death. The eyes might not have caused the narrator any harm, but they always irritated him when the old man looked at him. Furthermore, the narrator's madness can be confirmed using literary devices such as tone, symbolism, and repetition in the story. Therefore, the analysis of the story proves that the narrator killed the old man because of illusion that the eyes were connected to evil. In life decisions should not be made on assumptions, instead, evidence must be used in making critical decisions such as death.

Work Cited

Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Eighth International Student Edition. WW Norton & Company, 2011.