Tell Tale Heart Essay

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the man since he “saw it with perfect distinctness --all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones” (Poe 1).

Thirdly, the narrator`s mission begins with careful planning and confidence, but eventually his guilty standards creates his downfall. For at least seven days, the narrator watches the old man while he sleeps and he even, “chuckled at the idea” (Poe 1) that the old man knows nothing of the narrator`s “secret deeds or thoughts”(Poe 1). The narrator`s remarks demonstrate his confidence and daringness, even arrogance, in his arrangement to accomplish, “Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph” (Poe 1). The narrator`s statement in his hateful deed proceeded, nonetheless, the narrator’s brain is immediately overwhelmed by blame, which makes his dream of listening to the old man’s pulse provoking him from under the deck. His distrustfulness makes the heart beat “It grew louder --louder --louder!“ (Poe 3) and in his condition of dizziness he admits to slaughtering the old man with expectations of freeing his life of the frightening pulse, “I felt that I must scream or die!” (Poe 3).

In conclusion, the narrator embarks to free his life of the anxiety he made by obsession on the old man`s eye, however once the anxiety is destroyed, another anxiety – the old man`s pulse – is made and turns out to be more overpowering that the first. In playing mind diversions with himself - observing how far he can drive himself to victory over his own craziness - the narrator slips further into a dreamland. His overriding trust in executing the man at last. The narrator’s creative ability makes his need and plan to wreck the eye, yet it then makes the need to spare himself from the pulse that drives him over the edge.