“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story written by Edgar Allan Poe. He writes about a man who goes mad by being disturbed by the old man’s eye. The man is driven insane over the eye and leads to the murder of the old man in cold blood. The man’s own conscience eats away at him until he finally confesses to this horrific dead. The central idea in Poe’s story is from a psychological point of view that illustrates the smallest features on one human being can drive someone crazy. It also shows how insane individuals think as if sane but cannot live with the guilty conscience without expressing their act of violence to someone before it makes them imagine things that are not even there.
The protagonist in the story is the man who takes care of or lives with the old man. The man considers himself to be smarter than the normal madman. We see this characteristic when he questions himself with “would a madman have been so wise as this?” referring to the ease at which he enters the old man’s room (1572). The man is a dynamic character that thinks he is fine in the beginning of the story but by the end just can’t handle this guilty conscience and falls apart. The characteristic is shown w
ith the comment “I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! - here, here!” (1575).
The story is told through first person point-of-view. We are only able to understand and visualize the thoughts and emotions of the protagonist. The other character in the story is closed to our ideas. The man’s internal thoughts are clear that he is disturbed by the appearance of the old man’s eye. His feeling about the eye whenever it’s visible makes his “blood run cold” (1572). The old man never insulted the man; it was his eye that bothered him. The man surprisingly says, “I loved the old man” (1572). Just before he kills the old man he describes himself as “nervous: so I am” and “excited me to uncontrollable wrath” (1574). This first person perspective is important because we get insight on seeing the dynamic change in character internally, and we are able to describe his psychological state of mind after he confesses to the murder.
Language in this story is important to the characters involved. The personification “my blood ran cold” is used to describe the feeling the man has about the eye (1572). The imagery that is portrayed by the protagonist is the understanding of the sensory images. We can visually picture the premeditated murder and the murder itself with the detailed description on how the murder took place. We can also visualize the man breaking down at the end
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