Tell Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart: Mental State “ The Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe was first published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. The victom is an old man with a filmly “vulture-eye,” as the narrator calls it. The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by dismemberment and hides it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator’s guilt manifest itself in the form of sound-possibly hallucinatory- of the old man’s heart still beating under the floorboards. His mental state in this story was clearly absurb and psychotic in every way possible and it led him to take an old man’s life. This shows that we as humans ascribe an incredible amount of significance to each others' expressions, particularly those which involve the eyes. The n Psychosis is a mental disorder in which a person has lost some contact with reality. There may be severe disturbances in thinking, emotions, or behavior, the narrator in this story clearly shows that all the psychotic disorders fit him perfectly. In the story, some ways he showed he was psycho, he said “True!-nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in earth. I heard many things in hell. How, the, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me an insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold,