Julissa Lizzette Garza

Derec Moore

ENGL 1302

April 26, 2020

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mental illness is a health condition that affects a person’s thinking, emotion, and behavior. This results in individuals making haste and unthought-of judgments which put others or the individual at risk. In the Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses allegory, symbolism, and imagery of an unnamed narrator to defuse the actions and explanations of mental illness. According to the World Health Organization (27), statistics show that almost ten percent of the human population has mental issues, therefore making mental health a matter of interest that should be addressed. The anonymous narrator remains an unreliable narrator. The narrator is irrational and mentally unstable. In the Tell Tale Heart we can see, “I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight.” (Poe) The narrator is not logical, invading the old man’s room as he sleeps. The narrator starts by taking care of an older man with an evil eye. Later, decides to kill the older man, and in the end, the narrator’s guilt became unbearable, leading him to surrender to the officers.

In the Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses the allegory of an unnamed narrator to defuse the actions and explanations of mental illness. Poe uses inconsistent statements throughout the story, which points to vagueness and questions the story’s credibility. Such inconsistencies point to the narrator’s struggle with the evil that is bedridden in his character and the fears that the narrator is experiencing. For instance, the narrator endeavors to explain what happened with the body of the older man, the narrator says that there was no stain of anything, and the body was carefully placed in the underneath of the floor. The narrator assumes that the body of the older man is undetectable. The three police officers would easily detect the smell of a dead body at the crime scene. The narrator also lost control of himself when he heard steadily increasing noises. He became paranoid and began to claim to have heard, “groan of mortal terror… that arises from the bottom of the soul.” There is no way one can listen to death since death cannot speak. The above examples can show inconsistencies of the allegorically used to show the mental state of the narrator. The killing of the older man does not have a clear justification. The narrator has no reason but imaginary illusions, which only people with mental illness experience. As previously mentioned above from the illustrations, we can conclude that the narrator would have Psychosis. Another example proving this Poe mentions “but the noise steadily increased.” (Poe) The speaker was under the assumption the heartbeat of the older man could be heard aloud. People are suffering from Psychosis experience, possessiveness, overestimation, over-confidence, hallucination, and delusions, according to Garret (Garret 192).

In the Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses the symbolism of an unnamed narrator to defuse the actions and explanations of mental illness. The story uses body parts and other items to symbolize the state of the narrator. “First of all I dismembered the corpse.” (Poe) The speaker killed the older man because of the evil eye. Sometimes, these symbols represent the narrator rather than the older man. The eye of the old man is unique; the narrator refers to it as a “vulture eye.” The vulture is known to feed on the carcass, dead flesh. The evil eye can represent a feel of being watched and can come off as preying and death. This explains what happens in the story, the narrator preys on the older man, and the older man is dead. The eye symbolism reveals the behavioral nature of the narrator, which is quite different from the average person. The eye begins to agitate the narrator, and the narrator starts to compartmentalize how he wants to deal with the situation. The narrator sees the eye as evil. What perplexes the reader is why the narrator killed the older man instead of the eye. This can possibly explain the mental state of the narrator; he took the life of the older man instead of the eye. The heart symbolizes conscience and emotions. As mentioned before, Poe states “but the noise steadily increased” to prove the speaker was going insane because of the sound of the heartbeat. The narrator believes that the older man’s heart is beating loudly; it can be it was his heart beating, making him confess the murder. The narrator’s spirit was symbolically haunting him to acknowledge the killing so that the older man’s heart can rest in peace. The narrator begins to hallucinate ringing bell, it rings louder and even louder. The guilt that the narrator is feeling symbolically ties to the torture of his soul. Symbolism in the text helps to expose the narrator’s behavior and his heinous act of murder.

The imagery of the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe reveals the suffering of the narrator according to his revelations in the story. The way the narrator describes these images show the instability of his mental cognizant. For instance, the narrator says, “the disease had sharpened his senses…not destroyed… not dulled them.” The narrator believes that his sensory have been made sharper, but as we know, diseases weaken the sensory system. This imagery helps to unravel the mental health of the narrator. The narrator also speaks of how he undid the lantern each night cautiously. “Cautiously…Oh, so cautiously…Cautiously for the hinges creaked…he undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.” (Poe) The narrator’s sentiment, “hinges creaked,” is auditory imagery. The narrator describes the sound and images with undiluted exactness; it is in his interest that the finer details is a question to ponder on.

In most cases, it is people with a given interest or with health issues that get concerned about the finer details. (Kidd et al. 109) In this case, the narrator’s interest in the finer details explains more than what meets the eye, given his behavior in question. The narrator quickly notes the thin ray of light across the darkroom. The narrator also describes the old man’s residence as “black as pitch with thick darkness.” This imagery helps the reader to create mental images of what exactly the room looked like. The images also reveal the darkness in the thoughts of the narrator and possibly explain why he took the step to kill the older man, according to (Kidd et al. 110).

In the Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator wrestles with insanity driving him or her to commit heinous crimes. The narrator tries to normalize his actions to hide his mental illness. “First of all, I dismembered the corpse.” (Poe) Looking at the older man’s abnormal eye caused the speaker to take death upon his or her own hands. They are deciding to kill an older adult. In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe builds the thrill and tension causing the narrator to lose his or her mind. The mental health of the narrators had the readers in question. Had the narrator’s mental stability not been in question it would have not drive the narrator to take death into his own hands. Due to the mental instability of the narrator hearing sounds, he or she would have not surrendered to the officers as Brittan (54) notes that the three stylistic devices; imagery, symbolism, and allegory, were used effectively by the writer, Poe to unveil the mental issues that affected the narrator. The tools expose the narrator’s thinking and his evil plans. The writer also uses stylistic device to get to the readers to understand the mental state of the people who have a mental illness.

Works Cited

Brittan, Simon. Poetry, Symbol, and Allegory: Interpreting metaphorical language from Plato to the present. University of Virginia Press, 2003.

Gadhvi, Mahesh. “Physiology, Sensory System.” StatPearls [Internet]., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 5 Oct. 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK547656/.

Garety, Phillip A., et al. “A cognitive model of the positive symptoms of psychosis.” Psychological medicine 31.2 (2001): 189-195.

Kidd, Judith, and Linney Wix. “Images of the heart: Archetypal imagery in therapeutic artwork.” Art Therapy 13.2 (1996): 108-113.

“Learn About Mental Health – Mental Health – CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 26 Jan. 2018, www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm.

World Health Organization. Department of Mental Health, et al. Mental health atlas 2005. World Health Organization, 2005.