Character Analysis Of The Narrator of The Tell Tale Essay

Character Analysis of the narrator: The Tell Tale Heart

The narrator is the protagonist in the The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe. This short story is about a man that wants to prove his sanity even though he has plans to compete murder upon the old man that lives with him. He has a deep passionate fear of this mans blue eye which he feels is wicked, and vulture like. He speaks of love for the old man; however the old mans vulture like blue eye is something that the narrator wants gone. So he rationalizes that the old man must die in order for his emotional stability to return. Through several nights of plotting the premeditated murder of the wicked eye, the narrator sneaks in to the old mans room in the middle of the night for seven days to try and catch the wicked eye peering at him. As he sneaks in the room on the eighth night he causes the old me to shift in bed and final wakes him up. He stand quite for an hour waiting for one or the other to make a move and final the narrator decides to open the lantern and see if the eye is peering.

Before the old man knows what has happened he is dragged to the floor, under the bed and is suffocated to death. Now it is finally over and the evil eye is dead, the narrator is proud and content with his deed and cleans up his mess. He takes pleasure in how well he was able to conceal the matter and discard the corpse under the floorboards. Just as he is thinking back on how calm he has handle the situation he hears a knock at the door. The scream from the old man has brought the police to investigate the situation. He ushers them in and allows them to search the home giving the explanation that he scream because of a bad dream which woke him from his sleep. He goes on to explain that the old man is away in the country. The officer having satisfied the search with the ease of the narrator viable answer to the scream concludes the search and are ready to leave when they a presented with chairs to sit and chat. The narrator is full of pride for having done such a well done job he places his chair on the spot of where he as removed the planks and lead the corpse to rest. As they are in grossed in friendly chit chat the irrational sounds of thumping returns making the narrator nerves, he suspects that the police may hear it as well so he begins to talk fluently and louder. The louder he talks the louder the thumping sounds gets, and he does not know that it is the thumping of his own heart he hears and not that of the dead man. His mind is telling him that the officers are sitting mocking him as they listen to the thumping beneath them. He finally cant take it and has to scream out Villains! Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! tear up planks! here, here! it is the beating of his hideous heart! (Poe, Edgar Allen, 4)

The irony of this story is that the narrator is consumed with his own irrational thoughts and he interprets the sounds he hears as the old mans heart beating beneath the floor. The sounds are actual his own heart beat thumping with in his chest louder because of the fear he has for having just killed the old man. This fear takes over his thoughts and mind and literally drive him insane. He may have thought he was sane, calm and rational but it was his own mind, thoughts and increasingly intense thumping of his own heart beat that drove him to commit such a vicious and unspeakable crime of killing the old man he loved so dearly.