Insane Narrator

The Insane Narrator

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts. His parents David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, both died when Edgar was very young. Calvin Thomas published Poe’s first book, Tamerlane and other Poems in Boston in 1827. His first real job was the editor of Thomas W. White’s Southern Literary Messenger where he worked for nearly a year. In 1836, he was married to his 13-year-old cousin. He wrote many short stories including the Tell-Tale Heart in 1843, which is about a murderer who is subconsciously haunted into confessing what he just did. He died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore. The narrator is insane because of his unnatural preoccupation with the eye, his distorted logic, and the hearing of voices and sounds, which reveal the madness.

For some strange reason, the narrator was obsessed with the old man’s eye. He wasn’t even certain on how it started, but to him, it was an eye of a vulture. The old man was going to be murdered because of his pale blue eye. Infact, for seven straight nights at midnight the eye was closed. It wasn’t until finally on the eighth night when the narrator’s thumb slipped on the tin fastening, which woke up the old man. He grew furious when he did see the eye and new inside that he must murder this old man because of his eye. It is hard to imagine why a person’s eye would bother another person enough to kill, but some people are truly insane.

His logic was distorted, so to him, the murder of the old man was the only thing that could soothe his pain. He then made the decision to only kill him when he saw his eye. This took him eight days, though I’m sure he would have done it the first night if he had the chance. While he was killing the old man, he had a smile on his face. The murder of the old man was justified.One might