Author's Note: This is my response/analysis to "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. It took a few pieces, with help from Mr. Johnson to discover what I really wanted to talk about which is somewhere along the lines of what contained guilt can lead a person to do... I was trying to use strong vocabulary (as this tends to be one of my weaknesses), as well as include a few semantic/ syntactical devices in a more natural way, as I have the tendency to try and force them in. I am not sure why there are a few paragraphs highlighted, but I couldn't get it to change back to normal. Let me know what you think.
People feel safest when constantly hearing noise; sound gives us comfort, sound gives us warmth, and sound gives us breath. When the silence comes, normally during the night, things become eerie. The time when our minds go a little crazy, when it is dark, we can’t really see things, so we imagine them. We can’t really hear things, so we imagine them, and we can’t really comprehend things. Due to such little amount of noise, the least comfortable time is night. As far as hearing things, however, it can sometimes apply during the day. When you are thinking about one thing so frequently, you can sometimes faintly hear it, even when it’s not there. One thing that would lead a person to hearing something that is not there is guilt. Guilt is a deadly parasite – it kills people from the inside.
The man in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a victim of this parasite. He is so aware of what he has done, his hearing has been so heightened, that he begins to make up things in his head, just to satisfy his insanity, to satisfy his thirst for something exotic to happen. “And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror.” He literally believes that he can hear the heartbeat of the man, even after death. A heightened awareness present due to guilt only leads to bad things; in this character’s case it is even a step worse than paranoia: schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disease that causes the bearer to completely imagine things.
Even from the beginning of the story, the main character, although constantly claiming otherwise, has become mad; he has gone off the deep end a little; he has surrendered to this thought that the landlord’s eye is evil. "He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold...” There are people everywhere with cataracts in their eyes, or coloboma (cat) eyes; it is an entirely human reaction to be a bit spooked, and maybe even avoid the person for a while. This character however, brings himself to believe that this man – who has done him no wrong – has an eye that is reason enough for murder. He has no reason to kill this man, he acts with no reasonable motive. Thus he leads himself into the guilt he receives, it is not just some fluke situation. Guilt is deadly, but predictable. Oftentimes we know very well the amount of guilt our actions will leave us with.
Guilt is a human feeling. Although most people have not been involved in murder, all people will feel guilt sometime in their lives. We are in a world full of rules, in society, religion, and just about everything else. This story, for example, is set in the Victorian Era. This era was known for strict behavioral beliefs, and also Christianity. This man, when deciding to take the old man’s life, fully understands that his is breaking the sixth commandment according to Moses, as well as breaking the morals of his society. However, Christianity has a very powerful theme: forgiveness. The only way to get rid of guilt is by forgiveness.
Forgiveness is easier to give to someone, than to give yourself. In order to get rid of guilt entirely, you need to forgive yourself.Guilt grows steadily, and without forgiving yourself, it just continues to build up inside. We are our own worst critics, because we know of all of our own mistakes, all of our reasons to be guilt. Without forgiveness, the guilt grows more. This character’s actions become a manifestation of what happens when the guilt becomes unmanageable. He refuses to accept what he has done, and forgive himself. Sure, it would normally take more time to forgive oneself. Under these circumstances, however, when the police show up right after his evil deed, there are only two choices that he has: to forgive himself, or let the guilt takeover, and give in.
After the death of the old man, the murderer begins to feel his self-inflicted guilt. He has the knowledge that the police officers do not, of the man directly beneath his feet. The guilt he is feeling for killing the man is so powerful, so overwhelming, that his schizophrenia reveals itself as he begins to hear the man’s heartbeat. The imagined sound is driven by his guilt directly. As the sun begins to rise, he hears the heartbeat louder and louder. The sun is a symbol of knowledge, revealed while the man begins to worry that the officers can hear the heartbeat too. He is driven into confessing to the murder, revealing the man beneath him; he finally bursts out the guilt, admitting to what he’d done. Guilt leads us into sick measures. Like a parasite, unless eliminated from the body, the outcomes are deadly.
