Present the closing argument for the prosecution in the case of The Tell Tale Heart - Essay Example

The Tell-Tale Heart The villain first feigns courage. This is evident in the fact that as the law enforcing team arrives in the house, he welcomes them and starts it off by implying to the fact that the old man is away. This is well advanced by his motive in trying to convince the officers that the loud groan and scream that was allegedly reported was probably made by him in a dream. He is quick t own it up when he says “Yes, the shriek. A shriek of terror. It was my own…during a dream” (Edgar 13).

Evidently, he is alluding to the fact that he is conscious of whatever transpires in his dream. As he states this, he is quick to suggest to the officers that he is innocent despite there being no inquisition into this. It is evident at this point that he is directed by his guilty conscience.When the villain is presenting his thought in the event of planning to execute the move that would help him bring to a stop the evil eye, he argues that he had no problem with the old man when he says, “True enough.

The old man had never done me harm. But he had this one sickly eye. It was like the eye of a vulture….” (Edgar 12) . How is this possible if yet the eye was part of this old man? I suppose the villain is playing psychologist to find a reason to claim innocence and ignorance of the ultimate ending. It beats logic to show pity to one you claim is a source of your curse. In this the villain claims the old man has a vulture like eye that causes a chill deep down his bones, for the reason that it had something in hiding.

It is most certain that the villain simply uses this as an excuse to achieve his goal.When the villain plans to commit the crime, he does it in the dark, and he is fully aware that he needs a lantern light that will help him see what he does and how he does it. And this is done stealthily which he knows well that is the only way to avoid the attention of the old man that has always been so sensitive in his sleep. He speaks of adjusting the lantern just to produce a single ray of light so as to strike directly into the old man’s “evil eye” when he says, “…And then I shone my light, a single beam, upon THE EYE.

” (Edgar 13) This, remember is done in the dark. A falsification of this statement is by the fact that the villain claims to clearly or instinctively shine the single ray of light into the old man’s evil eye. As this is done, the old man kind of goes into a shock; a condition that enables the villain do his action with much ease as the old man is unaware of what happens from this point. Once again linking up the chain of events and basing on the neighbors’ report to the police, why is it then that a sharp scream was heard that night if the old man wasn’t aware of what was done to him.

When the officers are taking tea with the villain and having sensed his guilt, they are clever to make it more resounding. He seems really uneasy at the issues that the officers are discussing which increasingly becomes evident in his facial expression and gesturation when he wonders, “I grew pale. Why wouldn’t they leave?” (Edgar 14). This is only possible if he had something to do with the death. Again he feigns confident but it the pressure becomes too much to bear. It is at this point that the curse strikes his soul.

He may have done this hastily by the conventional feelings associated with such capital offences and not being able to explain how it happened, based on his remark, “It was over” (Edgar 13), but now it is clearly ringing in his mind that he has done it.His confession is the last thing needed to draw the line between his guilt from the innocence that he first tries to play before he is confronted with the reality. When he can take this no more, he opens up to the officers and confesses the murder and then directs the officers to the spot that he has heaped parts of the old man’s corpse, and he remarks, “Villains! Monster! I did it!

I confess! Tear up the floor!..” (Edgar 15)Work citedEdgar, Allan, P. (2011) The Tell-Tale Heart. September 5. Scholastic Scope.