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An "Evil Eye" would drive anyone crazy
Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart" illustrates how one characters imagination is capable of being so animated that it completely takes over a persons life. The display of the narrator’s imagination unconsciously planted seeds in his mind, and those seeds grow into an uncontrollable situation for which there is no room for reason and which end up in murder. The narrator takes care of an old man with whom the relationship is unclear, although the narrator’s comment of "For his gold I had no desire" (Poe 34) lent itself to the fact that the old man may be a family member whose death benefit the narrator financially. The narrator also intimates a caring relationship when he says, "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (34). The narrator’s obsession with the old man’s eye leads to his downfall as he is overwhelmed with internal conflict and his shift of emotion from confidence to guilt.
A critic once said, "The Tell-Tale Heart is one of the most effective parables ever conceived." (Ward) The fixation on the old man’s vulture-like eye forces the narrator to devise a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees †very gradually †I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" ( Poe 34). The narrator begins his tale of deception by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly gains the idea that the narrator is indeed out of control. The fact that the old man’s eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must have a reason to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own irrational fear of the eye.
The narrator wrestles with conflicting feelings of responsibility to the old man and feelings of eliminating the man’s "Evil Eye" (Poe 34). "Neither does the narrator explain how or why exactly the old man's pale blue eye, with a film over it bothers him so greatly." (Chua) The narrator shows his conflicting feelings when he confesses he loves the old man, but he is still too overwhelmed by the pale blue eye to restrain himself from the burning desire to eliminate the eye. His struggle is evident as he waits to kill the old man in his sleep so that he won’t have to face the old man when he kills him. Though the narrator can’t justify the killing unless the vulture eye was open. The narrator is finally able to kill the man because "I saw it with perfect distinctness †all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot" (Poe 35). By this point, the narrator proved to the reader that he had lost control of his actions and carried out the evil deed.
The mission of the narrator begins with precise planning and confidence, but ultimately his guilty conscience creates his downfall. For seven days, the narrator watches the old man while he sleeps and he even "chuckled at the idea" that the old man knows nothing of the narrator’s "secret deeds or thoughts" (Poe 35). The narrator’s comments show his confidence in his plan to kill: "Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers †of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph" (34-35). The narrator’s assurance in his evil deed continued even when the police came to check on the old man and investigate the loud noises neighbors heard the night before: "I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome" (36). However, the narrator’s mind is quickly consumed with guilt, which creates his delusion of hearing the old man’s heartbeat taunting him from under the flooring. "Poe so manipulates the action that the murder, instead of freeing the narrator, is shown to heighten his agony and intensify his delusions." (Gargano) His paranoia makes the heart beat "louder †louder †louder!" and in his state of delirium he confesses to killing the old man in hopes of ridding his life of the menacing heartbeat.
The narrator sets out to clear his life of the fear he created by becoming obsessed over the man’s eye, but once that fear is destroyed, another fear, the beating of the heart, is created and becomes more overwhelming than the first. The narrators overriding confidence in killing the man ultimately turns into overriding guilt even as he justifies in his mind the vicious killing, chopping up the body and placing it under the floorboards. The narrator’s imagination creates his need and plan to destroy the eye, but it then creates the need to save himself from the heartbeat that drives him over the edge.
Works Cited
John Chua, An overview of The Tell-Tale Heart, in Exploring Short Stories, Gale Research, 1998.
James W. Gargano, The Question of Poe's Narrators, in College English, Vol. 25, no. 3, December, 1963, pp. 177-81. Reprinted in Short Stories for Students, Vol. 4.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.
Alfred C. Ward, Edgar Allan Poe: `Tales of Mystery and Imagination', in Aspects of the Modern Short Story: English and American, University of London Press, 1924, pp. 32-44. Reprinted in Short Stories for Students, Vol. 4.
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