Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart Essay

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart relates the story of one man’s obsession at the seemingly trifle and otherwise common place prospect of the gaze of another’s eyes. So consumed is this person of his obsession with the eyes belonging to his tenent or landlord that one night he decides to gouge it off, kill its owner, and bury the eyeball in question under the floorboard. Needless to say, Edgar Allan Poe succeeds in exacting yet another dose of terror, dread and trepidation from his readers. The stated sentiments exist partly because of the plot, but largely because of Poe’s use of visual imagery, characterized by words which harp on the senses as people perceive it.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   These perceptions, the heightened sensations that the narrator, who is in fact, also the murderer in the story, feels –   in the extent of the short story is given structure by the way which he proceeds to talk of his victim. He writes first of being alluded to the eye, not being particularly attached to it initially, but describing it with an endearment out of place, and with a distinction which one would not normally employ when referring to something as ordinary as one of the five senses, except perhaps if people were talking about their lovers (which the narrator is not). His interest shifts and evolves as the story progresses. Talk of the eye in question becomes irrational to the point of alarming, and readers know at this point that something ominous is about to ensue. The narrator begins to talk distinctly of the eye as it were a separate entity, separate from that of its owner, the landlord, who he admits of being nothing but kind, and not having mistreated him in any way. His loving and long winded descriptions regarding, and romancing the eye in question, and the person to whom it belongs to culminates in a course of action which brings him to the landlord’s bedroom in the middle of the night. While in the victim’s sleep, he decides to take the eye for himself, and he describes it with such loving and final triumph as though it were a destiny and an important task that had long been awaiting fruition, and the time has come for it to bear fruit.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   More than what has already been narrated and told in the plot, the story tells of one man’s obsessive longing, his ascension to insanity (or a closely related version of it) because of the pursuit of that longing, and the consummation of the same longing and madness by means of taking matters into his own hands, and literally plucking out from the face of the earth what had been bothering him for so long. Although not the most pleasant of activities, and certainly not the one people would resort to as a matter of routine or principle. But for the narrator, for the person who needed to put an end to this longing, this itch, this gap which need to be filled, it meant the world and more. It meant a sense of triumph. It indulged his senses and satisfied his itch for an irrational but complex need to fill up a gap in his inner being and sanctum. Despite the questionable ethical as well as moral tendency with which he proceeded in committing the crime, to him it was a necessary road to ease and fulfillment. A Poem As It Regards to the Tell Tale Heart True, people are kind and truer still, people are beautiful but beauty exists in fewer instances these days. In smaller and smaller and smaller packages. So come dearest, let us you and me — die