The Tell-Tale Heart: An Analysis

With all the terrorism that has been happening around the world, it might remind you of the way the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart goes insane and makes irrational actions. The short novel The Tell-Tale Heart written by Poe is one of his best works from all the stories that I have read that was written by him. The Tell-Tale Heart begins with the narrator explaining to the reader that he is nervous but not mad. But yet he confesses that he killed an old man, and then he explains that he killed him for one reason. The old man’s pale blue eye. He explains that he wants nothing from the old man; he had never done anything wrong towards the narrator. Whenever the eye of the old man lands on the narrator he gets nervous. So he decided to get rid of the eye. So for a week or so, the narrator would open the door to the old man’s room very gently. After having opened the door wide enough for his head to pop-in, he would put in a lantern that has no lights on. And once his body is full in he would slowly turn the lantern on so that there is a single thin ray of light. He would then look at the maddening eye which was always closed. So it
But that story really got to me, I really enjoyed reading it. I would have never thought that this story would be part of gothic literature, but after reading and analyzing it, I have realized that this story has a lot of elements of a gothic literature. For example, the fact that the eye of the old man makes the narrator mad is supernatural, supernatural is a big element for gothic literature. Also, the narrator is unreliable. For example when Poe says ‘’the disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them.’‘ (Poe 1) he claims to have good and sharpened senses, but when the eye laid sight on the narrator he panicked and killed the old man. So in fact it is ironic that he says he isn’t mad when he killed a