Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe - Book Report/Review Example

Thesis ment Character conceives motives. The story illustrates how character is fundamental to motives. In addition, character influences thoughts. Individuals implement motives based on what they perceive. Nothing good comes from bad and nothing bad comes from good. That is the general principle of character that shape motives. Analysis of the Main Character from “Tell-Tale Heart.” “It is impossible to say how the idea entered my brain but it haunted me day and night once it was conceived” (12).

In the “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator informs the readers of how he feels when the idea of killing the old man crosses his mind. The narrator’s obsession with the idea of killing the old man is attributable to the fact that he does not like the old man’s eyes that are pale blue. He views the old man’s eyes as evil eyes. The narrator is cold-hearted by the fact that he drags the old man off the bed, pulls the bed on top of him, and waits for the man’s heart to stop.

Then he cuts the old man’s body up and hides his remains under the bed. The narrator is inhuman and insane for committing such an act, and feel that it is justified. If he is sane, he should spare the old man’s life. “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening, to see him lying on his bed” (27). The narrator is clever and tactful with his mission of killing the old man. He does not rush into killing the old man and does not change his normal routine of which he goes to the old man’s house to put the lantern.

He then squeezes his head through the doorway and lights the lantern. The old man is never suspicious about the narrator’s motive besides him [narrator] going there for seven days. The narrator is deceitful and cunning because the old man views him as philanthropic not knowing that he has sinister motives for taking his life. Even though the narrator does not like the old man’s eyes, he does not show the old man that he despises him. The narrator’s deceitfulness is evident by not showing his real motives and this made the old man an easy target to kill since he did not prepare for the worst that night.

“While they are all shooting the breeze, the narrator heard a terrible ticking noise that got louder until the he became nervous, confesses, and points the police to the old mans body; he states that the sound came from the old mans heart” (29). The narrator is fearful and perverse; he killed the old man alone, but he gets afraid when he hears the ticking noise from where he hides the remains when he is in the company of three police officers. The narrator is hopeless when he thinks that killing the old man will make him happy in life.

Hating someone is not sufficient a reason to take his or her life. He denies that the man has wronged him, and that he hates him. In the story the narrator does not explain about anybody he cared about or who cared about him apart from the old man. It is likely that the narrator is lonely and has no friends apart from the old man. He is physically and mentally ill; the disease makes his senses powerful; hence, hating the old man to the extent of killing him (7). In conclusion, the narrator is a cold-hearted, hopeless, cunning, and deceitful person and it is wrong for him to take the life of the old man no matter how much he hates his eyes.

He has a mental problem and is insane. Work cited Poe, Edgar Allan. The Tell-tale Heart. Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe, 2014. Print.