Research Paper on Edgar Allan Poe
Evans 1
“The Tell-Tale Heart.” There are many great authors in short story literature who present many different styles and characteristics of writing to make the reader more interested and have a better understanding of their work. One author in particular who usually uses a specific dark, evil, or psychotically unstable type style in his stories in Edgar Allan Poe. In particular one of his stores, “The Tell-Tale Heart” there are many characteristics for someone who is interested in the workings of the human mind. While reading the story Poe breaks down the mind and shows how paranoia and insanity can go hand in hand. He uses his words productively in the story to display paranoia and intellectual decent. He lessens the story of overkill features as a method to intensify the killer’s fixation with precise and unembellished entities such as the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own declaration of sanity. The old man’s eye in the story is fixated with insanity by the killers fear and total distaste for it. His infatuation with the old man’s eye brings the killer to his end as he is overcome with an inner clash between conversions from self-assurance to guiltiness. The eye is described as blue with a type of veil covering it, which symbolizes the character having trouble with their inner vision or their outlook on the outside world. Anna Nesbit explains, “That some critics consider the eye to have a double meaning, as the “external eye” of the old man is seen in contrast to the internal “I” of the narrator. The eye can also be represented as the essence of the old man because the killer can hold a type of power that prevents him from hiding his secret wrong doings. The Eye is the overall reason for the killing of the man in the story and Kenneth Silverman says, “Because there is
Evans 2 something unseeing about it, when we look at someone “eye to eye” we feel in touch with the person but this eye is blocked, filmed over. (Poe’s Major Tales page 31.)
“The Tell-Tale Heart.” There are many great authors in short story literature who present many different styles and characteristics of writing to make the reader more interested and have a better understanding of their work. One author in particular who usually uses a specific dark, evil, or psychotically unstable type style in his stories in Edgar Allan Poe. In particular one of his stores, “The Tell-Tale Heart” there are many characteristics for someone who is interested in the workings of the human mind. While reading the story Poe breaks down the mind and shows how paranoia and insanity can go hand in hand. He uses his words productively in the story to display paranoia and intellectual decent. He lessens the story of overkill features as a method to intensify the killer’s fixation with precise and unembellished entities such as the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own declaration of sanity. The old man’s eye in the story is fixated with insanity by the killers fear and total distaste for it. His infatuation with the old man’s eye brings the killer to his end as he is overcome with an inner clash between conversions from self-assurance to guiltiness. The eye is described as blue with a type of veil covering it, which symbolizes the character having trouble with their inner vision or their outlook on the outside world. Anna Nesbit explains, “That some critics consider the eye to have a double meaning, as the “external eye” of the old man is seen in contrast to the internal “I” of the narrator. The eye can also be represented as the essence of the old man because the killer can hold a type of power that prevents him from hiding his secret wrong doings. The Eye is the overall reason for the killing of the man in the story and Kenneth Silverman says, “Because there is
Evans 2 something unseeing about it, when we look at someone “eye to eye” we feel in touch with the person but this eye is blocked, filmed over. (Poe’s Major Tales page 31.)