The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s scary stories. The story is told on behalf of an unnamed narrator who killed an older man with whom he lived under the same roof. The narrator insists on his sanity, explaining the crime by saying that the old man had an evil white eye, the sight of which infuriated the killer. The killer gave himself to the police, as he allegedly heard the loud beating of the victim’s heart from under the floorboards and was sure that the police also heard it.
In this work, the actions of the main character were influenced by an obsession. In turn, obsessive thoughts are signs of a serious mental disorder. Emerson et al. state that obsessive-compulsive disorder is defined as a difficult-to-control process of thought flow that is disruptive (1171). From the very beginning, the reader is presented with a worried, nervous person. In the story, he was irritated by the older man’s eye, and this was the reason for killing him. He was tormented by his thoughts, he thought about this eye constantly, but it is evident that the author did not mean the eye itself, but how a person kills himself with his thoughts.
From the perspective of psychology, it seemed that he subconsciously felt some guilt for himself, and by his actions, he unconsciously wanted to punish himself. After all, when the police came, the character said that the sound of the heart interfered with him (Poe 67). However, it was not the heart that interfered, but his thoughts. He had killed the older man in cold blood, and he could have easily gotten rid of the guards if he had wanted to. He felt guilty, felt that something was wrong with him, and so he tried to convince his readers of this to the point of paranoia.
In conclusion, this work is deep, with many internal problems of the main character. After all, he was ill with acute hearing, and he suffered from it. He was afraid of the older man’s terrible eye and killed him, and out of a painful sense of guilt, he turned himself to the police. The work, although short, still allows the reader to think about it.
References
Emerson, Lisa-Marie et al. “White Facets of Mindfulness Protect Individuals from the Negative Experiences of Obsessive Intrusive Thoughts?” Mindfulness, 2018, pp. 1170-1180.
Poe, Edgar. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Pioneer, 1843, pp. 64-67.