The Narrator’s Obsession and Control

It’s shown further in the text, how meticulous and patient the narrator is in his plot.
‘I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour, I did not move a muscle…’

This level of patience shows how far his obsession has developed. The narrator is showing that he is willing to be incredibly patient when it comes to killing the old man, because he been so driven to madness, that he’ll do anything.

‘So, I opened it – you cannot imagine how stealthily…’

‘…a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shone from out the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.’

This shows how slowly he is willing to go to make sure he isn’t caught. The dashes help create the feeling of how cautious he’s being. The language and punctuation help the reader feel as though they’re experiencing the same anticipation as the narrator.

The Illusion of Confidence

He is over-confident about how well he carried out the plot, once he is done with it.
‘I went down to open it with a light, – for what had I now to fear?’

After he has murdered the old man, and cleaned up everything, the police then knock on his door as they heard the old man scream before he died. With a cheery confidence, he goes down and answers it because he thinks he has done such a good job with his plot.

This shows that he initially feels no guilt.

‘…on the wild audacity of my perfect triumph…’

The narrator brings the police to the bedroom where he has killed the old man, showing them that he still has pride in what he did, even positioning himself on top the floorboards where he buried the corpse. This shows that the narrator is arrogant about the situation, and that he feels like he has gotten away with it before his guilt sets in.

Guilt and Psychological Breakdown

The guilt of the situation eventually sets in for him.
‘My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but they sat and chatted.’

After feeling fine and not guilty initially, he begins to hear the beating of the old man’s heart from beneath the floorboards. The policemen cannot hear the beating, so we can only assume that it’s the narrator’s guilty conscious, catching up to him and manifesting itself in this way.

‘“Villains!” I shrieked…’

His guilty conscience weighs on the narrator so badly that he feels like the only way in which he can escape the madness. The speech used contrasts the rest of the text, as we have only heard his inner monologue up until this point.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this The Tell-Tale Heart analysis demonstrates how Edgar Allan Poe uses literary techniques such as first-person narration, symbolism, and juxtaposition to explore the themes of guilt and madness. He has given us a first-person perspective so we see the world through his lens, as well as the things that contradict his worldview. Language has been used to help describe more accurately how far the extent of his madness has gone, as well as punctuation to help the reader read at a pace similar to what the narrator is at with his thoughts. Overall, the text is good at giving the reader a good understanding of what the narrator is going though, and adds greatly to the enjoyment of the piece.