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Madness in The Tell-Tale Heart

            Have you ever thought about killing someone? Maybe something about them such as a physical deficiency, drove you to hate them and their deformity, and you want to do them harm. Have you ever felt the rush of taking a life, or the guilt that follows such a gruesome deed? The narrator in "The Tell Tale Heart" has felt all of these emotions. The narrator in "The Tell Tale Heart" is mentally unstable. He shows us his instability because he wants to kill the old man just because of his deformed eye. He thinks it is right to kill the old man and because he believes he is right, he thinks killing the old man is the sane and rational thing to do. In the end, his mental illness even leads to his confession of this awful act.
             First off, the narrator in "The Tell Tale Heart" demonstrates he is mentally unstable because he wants to kill the old man due to his "vulture" eye (Poe). The narrator's love and respect for the old man is overshadowed by his obsession with that pale blue eye (Poe). He wants to kill the old man because of his eye, because he feels that the eye is always looking at him and criticizing him (Poe). He feels condemned under its gaze (Poe). He mentions many times in the story that he would like the eye to go away forever (Poe). Not only does he openly admit his hatred of the eye but he also repeats and repeats how much he despises the old man's eye (Poe). The narrator even admits that the old man has never wronged him or given him insult, but that it was the eye (Poe). This is a mental obsession with the old man's eye. He is obsessed with the idea that the eye is evil and that it is affecting him negatively (Rajan). After all his ranting about details of the eye he finally says he wants to kill the old man to kill the eye (Poe). This will close the eye's disturbing gaze forever, because it is the "right thing" to do, for him. The next demonstration of his illness is the care in which he tries to murder the old man.


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