The Teel-Tale by Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example

Due: Descriptive Essay about a Narrator Character: The Tale Tell Heart The short story, ‘The Teel-Tale’ is a story that present an unknown narrator who is involved in murder of an old man. Edgar Allan Poe was the author of this thrilling short story. The narrator has a task to the readers of convincing them of his sanity as a result of a murder he allegedly committed. A wide range of the narrators characters are shown in this short story. These characters range from positive to negative. Some of the characters as discussed below.

When a person shows abnormal behaviors with diminished empathy and remorse, then he or she is characterized to be psychopathic. A person with psychopathic behavior is said to have a mental disorder by his ability to endure antisocial behaviors. The narrator in this story displays psychopathic behaviors in several situations. In the beginning of the story narrator says,’ I loved the old man! He had never wronged me! He had never given me insult!’ (Poe 1). The narrator kills the old man without any motive since he claims that the old man has never wronged him and that he loved him.

In general society setting, this will be perceived to be an abnormal or psychopathic behavior. Similarly, he went to the old man house everyday for seven days just to shine the old man’s eyes which he claimed were ‘evil eyes’. This further illustrates the narrator Psychopathic nature. Remorseful nature of the character is also displayed in this context. When one is filled with guilt or regret about an act he was involved in, then he is said to be remorseful. At the beginning of the story, the narrator tries to proof his sanity.

He tries to exclude himself from madness. This shows how much he regrets his behavior and tries to make the reader understand his position. He even claimed that he loved the old man and he had nothing on him. When the police came to check on the old man, the narrator is able to convince them that the old man was out of the country. However, the guilt and remorse of his act build up and he could barely hold on. He breaks downs and confesses. The situation was so intense that the narrator hallucinates.

He claimed that the ringing in his ears were the old man’s heart beats. A character that is easily agitated or alarmed is said to be nervous. When nervous persons are caught in a challenging or difficult situation they become tense and anxious and it may result to the character behaving or acting abnormally. The character in the story is revealed to be a very nervous character. The narrator claims that he was sick. He said that he had a disease that caused him to be hypersensitive to situation.

However, this is not a disease but a display of his nervous nature. On the eighth day of his visit, the narrator ritual is broken when the old man awakes and finds him in his house. He always found the old man asleep the other days. This change of situation makes the narrator to tense and subsequently becomes very anxious and nervous which results to him killing the old man. This can further help to explain why the narrator killed the old man although he had no motive. Similarly, when the police visit the old man house, the narrator tenses and he is unable to conceal his guilt and ends up confessing to the police.

He becomes so nervous that he even hallucinates of the old man’s heart beats ringing despite the fact that the old man was dead. In conclusion, many characters of the narrator can be discussed including his claim of sanity. Although there is ambiguity in the relation between the narrator and the old man, no clear motive can be deduced which may have made him to kill the old man? There is thin proof in the story that can defend the sanity of the narrator as he claims. The fact that he felt the guilt after killing the old man which can defend his sanity and can be perceived be rational.

However, the act of killing the old man and trying to conceal the act displays him as insane. His irrationality in thinking and over acuteness of his senses pins him as a madman( Franklin 87) Work Cited Benjamin Franklin. "Poe and the Gothic Tradition," from The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 87. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell Tale Heart”. Boston: AcademicJump.com, 2001, p. 1