Tell Tale Heart

             Within the human psyche there is a small and sometimes undefined line between what drives us to do good and that which pushes towards corruption. The battle to maintain balance between the two is the theme of Edgar Allan Poe's ''The Tell-Tale Heart.'' For sane individuals it requires a traumatic or life altering event to push them across the line, however for the insane it can be a very inconsequential event that drives them completely mad.
             From the onset of this story the narrator tries to convince us, as the reader, that he is not mad, but rather has acquired due to an illness ''sharpened the senses.''(par. 1). The first instance in which we are let in on how acute his senses are is the case of the old man's ''vulture eye.''(par. 3). The old man's eye evokes an irrational fear out of the narrator from the onset. ''When it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees-I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.'' (par. 2). It was only this brief encounter with the gazing eye of the old man that pushed him over the line. Shortly after deciding to kill the old man, we are once again re-assured by the narrator of his sanity. He feels by describing in great depth the method in which he went about stalking and eventually killing the old man, that we will accept his acute senses rather than his madness. ''You would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in-it took me an hour to thrust my head within the opening.''(par. 3). His attempts at letting us into his personality only further our beliefs of his madness. The narrator's murderous act takes place on the eighth night of his stalking. A rather ironic requirement for him to murder the old man is that he has to see the ''blue-glazed'' eye gazing upon him. The irony e
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Tell Tale Heart. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 16:18, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/32040.html