Mr CHENNOUFI DJELLOUL

GROUP6

ANALYSIS OF THE SHORT STORY ‘ TELL TALE HEART ’

Poe want to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration, Poe lives
a psychological contradiction that contribute to murderous profile, Poe
articulates his self-defense against madness In terms of heightened sensory
capacity .The narrator views his hyper sensibility as proof of his sanity not a
symptom of madness and he uses the stylist tools of narration for the purposes
of his own sanity plea. Another contradiction central to the story involves the
tension between the narrator’s capacities for love and hate. Poe explores here
a psychological mystery that people sometimes harm those whom they love
and need in their lives. The narrator reduces the old man to the pale blue eye
in obsessive fashion, he wants to separate the old man of his “evil eye “
because he can not distinguish between the “eye” and the “I “the identity of
the old man ,he sees the eye as completely separate from the man so he is
capable of murdering him while maintaining that he loves him. The narrator’s
conviction pushes him to dismember the old man and separate his body of his
eye .In the end the strategy turns against him when his mind imagines other
parts of the old man’s body fighting him .

In the other hand ,the eye in this story represents the true nature of the
narrator ,it describes him as evil because without reason he kills the old
man ,dismembers his body ,hides it under the floor and forgetting all human
qualities .It is evident that the narrator has a problem in accepting himself as
carzy and accepting his actions when he killed the old man .