The Tell- Tale Heart

The story is full of mysterious and unknown. We do not know the identity of the narrator; we do not know the relationship between the narrator and the old man; we do not know the reasons for the narrator’s murdering. Then, what we know? The narrator nearly told everything happening in his mind which supposed not to be known by others. So we are lucky. We could detect some clues for the murdering case.

First, I think the story has three main parts: the reasons why he want to kill the old man; the process he performed the murder; after the murdering, his struggle in the deep heart when the policemen came.

The readers could sense that the narrator is out of mind at the very first sentence and it seems that he has two personalities. In the first sentence of the story, the narrator told the readers that he was nervous and questioned “Why will you say that I am mad”. In the whole story, nobody ever said that he was mad. It is interesting. I could tell that one of his personalities thinks that he is mad because of his odd or abnormal thoughts and behaviors. And the other personality who performs the murdering has so many reasons to kill the old man. So in his deep heart, he might know that something wrong with him, but the other one did not want to convince the fact.

In the second part, the narrator prepared for seven days to perform the murdering. He said, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing but you should have seen me. How wisely I proceeded- with what caution –with what foresight -with what dissimulation I went to work. ” He was so proud of himself. However, he was not aware of the madness came from his reasons for murdering, which he took as granted. In the process of murdering, he was always fighting with himself. His fear, his nervousness, and his exciting, all came from his own mind. When he described the killing, he just said it with very lightly, normal and cold tone, said,” I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.” It seems that he does not feel nervous or fear when he did this. It is the point which let me feel crazy.

At the third part which is the climax of the whole story, the narrator’s spirit seemed broken. He could not make peace with himself like before. He admitted the murdering by himself.  I can tell that Edgar Poe is really good at conscious description. I nearly could feel the pain and the suffering of the narrator and why he has to admit the death.