The Tell-Tale Heart Interpretation, Essay Example

The author Edgar Allan Poe character did an excellent job of sharing an enormous amount of information while analyzing the psychological thoughts of being paranoid. “This story is an attempt to create an extremely brief piece packed with as much information as possible, though perhaps not the kind of information we get in many stories”(Shmoop 3).The story was about sensory and visual cues, whichcontribute to thenarrator’sparanoia state. The heighten noise levels, the old man’s evil eye, the midnight darkness, the old man groaning and lantern lights that was driving him mad.The narrator explains the characteristics of people that have the mental condition paranoia, which is cleverly shared in this short story. The narrator explains problems with hearing and vision can contribute to the deterioration of the mind. This correlates with the old man losing his hearing and vision that led to his groaning at night. Poe writes, “As we age, our sensory systems decline. We help this along by damaging our vision and hearing by doing foolish things. This decline in our senses leaves us in a world that is difficult and a little scary” (Education Portal 1). This story is close to home for Edgar Allan Poe because his life was filled with bouts of paranoia.Poe writes,“Fuelled by the fallout from the Boston spat, Poe’s crippling paranoia worsened. He became convinced people were trying to kill him and would regularly accuse acquaintances of attempting to sabotage his career, marriage, or finances” (Shortlist 2). There is several different analysis in the literary community that has associated Poe’s paranoia brought on by heavy drinking and failed marriages. It is clear that the story has some resemblance of how Edgar Allan Poe’s life spiraled out of control into madness. The theory makes sense because alcoholism breaks down the enzymes in your body while destroying the brain cells that help people hear and visualize.

Poe writes, “True! nervous very, very nervous I had been and am, but why would you say I am mad? The disease has sharpen my senses not destroyed not dulled them”. One of the reasons the character killed the old man was because of the moaning that reminded the paranoid character of his own sleepless nights of horror. Poe writes,“Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror.” The sensory part of the paranoid brain is responding to sounds justifying the madness. The narrator makes another point about sensory driving him crazy in this passage. Poe writes,”And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? –now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”. This is a parable that means the sound of cotton in the ears or the visual spider web across the old man’s eye; all contribute to sending the narrator into a paranoid state with justification.

The reason this interpretation is valid because the narrator tells us in the first sentence “acute sense of hearing” this means any little noise of adds to his paranoid conditions. This makes sense because the narrator specifically suggests that the noise of the night and the groans of the old man bring reminders of his own personal torment. The story reminds us that paranoia is the torment of the mind and the senses that never allows the old man and the narrator any piece of mind. Another distinction from the narrator is he did not kill the old man out of greed because he loved the old man. However, he killed the old man because he could hear the pain and horror of the old man. The narrator suggests the old man wanted to be killed because he never put up a fight and accepted his peaceful fate from the groaning and moaning existence.

The unknown narrator character believes that groans are evil and anyone that is groaning in misery probably does not want to live. Another example of how the moans were driving the paranoid character to insanity is the groaning passage by Poe. Poe writes,” It was not a groan of pain or of grief –oh, no! –it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe”. The paranoid character was sharing the most terrible conditions of hearing sounds of echoes that never let the paranoid man have peace of mind. The narrator suggested that in the paranoid state, the brain never allows him to sleep because sleep and night brings horror. The story was about distractions to the paranoid man such as groans, moans, noise in the night, the light from the lantern and the midnight dark. The midnight dark represented the primary moments of insanity was caused by the nightfall. This passage perfectly explains and corroborates his fear of the night. Poe writes, “I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.”

The unknown narrator use “the evil eye” to justify the old man was evil. The paranoid state was first love of the old man; the second state was the evil blue eye of the old man representing something that had to be disposed. The third state was in decision to kill the old man and the fourth state was the narrator going insane in front of the police officers. This was an excellent story about an old man and a paranoid narrator that both lived in horror as they both went mad because of this debilitating disease. This interpretation is one the most valid explanation because Edgar Allan Poe often was accused of being drunk or in a poor state of mind. However, this story was an intimate look into the paranoid mind of Edgar Allan Poe. One of the nurses that treated Poe during his illnesses, explain Poe had a rare brain disorder. It was believed that a combination of alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency syndrome and brain diseasecontributed to his moments of madness (Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, 2014). The parallels to Poe’s life are uncanny. The appearance that the old man might have been drunk. The failed relationship between the old man the paranoid narrator. The mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe with unknown reasons for paranoid. Just like the unknown reasons the narrator was going mad. I very witty story that truly reflects some of the same issues in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. In the end, it was ingenious that the narrator screams the police are all villains and the same way Poe admitted that everyone around him business partners and wife were all villains.

Cited Works

Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. (2014). The mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. Retrieved on October 17, 2014 from http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poedeath.htm

Education Portal. (2014). Sensory changes. Retrieved from http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/paranoia-relationships-with-sensory-changes-lesson-quiz.html#lesson

Shortlist. (2014). Edgar Allan Poe. Retrieved October 18, 2014 from http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/the-life-and-very-mysterious-death-of-edgar-allan-poe

Shmoop. (2014). The tell-tale heart: Introduction. Retrieved October 17, 2014 from http://www.shmoop.com/tell-tale-hearten