Insanity, Paranoia, and Murder
“True!- nervous very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why do you say that I am mad?” (Poe 1) The Tell Tale Heart is a horror fiction short story about a narrator who kills an old man because of his eye. The narrator stated, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me an insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!” (Poe 2) The narrator clearly says that he/she was going to kill the old man because of his eye which proves that he/she is unstable or insane. The narrator’s decision to confess to killing the old man impacts the end result of the story. The police wouldn’t have discovered the truth about his/her crime if he/she hadn’t confessed.
The narrator begins to reveal his/her true character at the beginning of the story when he/she attempts to convince the reader that he/she is not crazy. The narrator states, “True! nervous very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why do you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in heaven and on earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Poe 1) The narrator argues that he/she must be completely sane because he/she tells his/her story so calmly, even though his/her story was about how he/she killed someone because of his/her eye! This actually gives the opposite impression to the reader than he/she intends. He/she is also saying that the disease had sharpened his/her senses which proves that he/she must be paranoid about a lot of sounds and noises. Normal people do not have such acute senses and cannot hear things from the heavens and hell. The more that the narrator tries to prove that he/she is sane the more the reader believes the opposite.
The narrator’s instability leads him/her to execute his/her plan of killing the old man. His/her instability is shown when he/she states, “The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heartbeat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there for many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.”(Poe 12) This states that he/she is unstable and his/her instability leads him/her to kill the old man. Before that in the story, he/she had watched him for eight nights and that on his/her eighth night he/she commits the act.
In the last part of the book the narrator’s paranoia got the best of him/her. The narrator states “ No, no! They heard! They suspected! They knew! They were making a mockery of my horror! This I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now again! Hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! Villains!” I shrieked, dissemble no more! I admit the deed! tear up the planks! Here, here! it is the beating of his hideous heart!” This shows that his/her paranoia took hold of him, which caused him/her to think that the cops knew but were pretending not to know. Meanwhile, the cops didn’t even know about the crime he/she committed. The policeman thought that the old man that the narrator was talking about was out of the country. Maybe he was compelled to confess to relieve some anxiety and guilt he was feeling at that moment.
In the story, the narrator tries to justify killing the old man because of his eye, which clearly proves he is insane. He was trying to explain that he/she he wasn’t crazy. The more he tried to explain himself/herself, the more insane he appeared. His/her instability leads him/her to execute his/her plan and he/she kills the old man. The narrator thought that the police were on to him so he/she confessed and told them what he/she had done. At the end of the short story the narrator shows the reader that he/she was very paranoid because he thought they also heard the beating of the old man’s heart. The narrator from Tell Tale Heart does most likely have a disease called schizophrenia which caused him to have lots of anxiety, nervousness, delusions, and disturbing behavior.
