Beating Heart Of The Old Man example essay topic

Through Edgar Allen Poe's genius in "The Tell Tale Heart" he is able to create suspenseful tales through his unusual and unique use of plot, character development, and the point of view of the narrator. The exposition of "The Tell Tale Heart" begins with the narrator telling the reader how nervous he had been and is. He begins to lay down his defense and tries to convince the reader that he is not insane, only that since he has acquired "the disease" (Poe 36) his senses have been greatly sharpened. The conflict comes when we learn that he has gradually made his mind up to kill the old man who he lived with because he had an odd looking eyeball. The narrator proceeds to tell the reader how he entered the old man's room every night for a week around midnight with painstaking care and cracked open a lantern ever so slightly in the hopes that he would see the "eye" so he could kill the man. The climax occurs on the eighth night when the narrator's thumb slipped on the fastening of the lantern waking the old man.

After waiting a while, the narrator cracks open the lantern and this time sees "the eye". After a long pause he becomes aware of the sound of a heart beating louder and louder and decides it is the old man's and that it is so loud that it will soon alert a neighbor. He then leaps in and kills the man, dismembers him and hides him craftily under the floorboards. Rid of the old man's eye, and thoroughly satisfied by his "cleanup job", the narrator confidently invites the authorities, who had received a call from a neighbor, to investigate the premises. After having convinced the officers that the old man was in the country the narrator begins to hear the same heart beat he heard before, louder and louder. At the conclusion, he begins to get very nervous and agitated, supposing that the police must be hearing the same noises and finally cries out in confession unable to continue the murderous charade.

Edgar Allen Poe uses character development brilliantly. He develops the narrator from someone who the reader sees as merely fairly unusual, then becomes a careful planner of murder, and later a ruthless executioner and finally in the end a paranoid delusional "loon" for lack of a better term. In the first paragraph we may see the narrator as being eccentric or strange. He tells us that he has a disease that has "sharpened his senses" (Poe 36). He tells the reader "I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell" (Poe 36).

This is certainly strange but not enough to think him mad right away. After all he does mention that he has a disease. In the second paragraph the reader learns of the narrator's plan to kill the old man. Here we begin to see the narrator as someone who is capable of careful planning and cold calculation. The narrator makes the statement, "You should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what caution-with what foresight-with what dissimulation I went to work!" (Poe 36). This lends credibility to the narrator having homicidal tendencies but we do not yet know if he will act on them.

Poe further develops the narrator's character by committing the act of murder, proving to the reader that this character is indeed crazy enough to commit murder. Further, we learn that the narrator does so because he believes that the old man's heart is beating so loud that the neighbors will be alarmed by it. This is what finally causes him to commit the murder, and for the reader we discover a new level of insanity in the narrator, for he states; "And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? -now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton". (Poe 37) We suddenly realize that the narrator is hearing his own heart beat and mistaking it for that of the old man's.

However, we do not fully realize the true depths of the narrator's madness until the very end of the story when we find out that after he has calmly convinced the police that the old man is safely in the country and not buried underneath the very floorboards they sit on. Poe reveals to us through the narrator that this man now believes he once again hears the beating heart of the old man, not only that but he is sure that the policemen hear it too and are simply mocking him. This shows us the narrators true mental state, that of a raving lunatic. The point of view in "The Tell Tale Heart" is that of an unreliable first person narration. Edgar Allen Poe uses this point of view to allow the reader to truly enter into the mind of the murderer. His twisted rationales only serve to create a better understanding of the killer's thought processes.

For example, when the narrator is peeking his head into the old man's room he writes; "It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! - would a madman have been so wise as this?" He also writes, "If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body". It is through the use of quotes like these and many others in the story that allow such a unique insight into the story. Had the tale been told through someone else's eyes, I do not think it would be as good a story.

Through critical analysis we see the uniqueness of Poe's tale and the way he brilliantly combines plot, character development and point of view.

Bibliography

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Tell Tale Heart" Literature; an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: Terry, 2002.