The Tell-Tale Heart

As I read through Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart I couldn’t help but notice the obsession with madness.  The first very first sentence asks, “but why will you say I am mad?” (GASS 13).  Poe starts the story by with a question of madness that leads to the rest of the story.  I started the story by questioning the credibility of the narrator.  Why would I trust someone who isn’t sure if he is mad or not?  I feel like if someone is truly having to argue that they are not mad they are probably at least a little bit mad.  As the story continues it becomes clear that the narrator is mad.  It seems like it is important that the narrator proves his innocence.  He needs to make it clear that he isn’t mad and that his actions have no effect on him.  As the story continues it becomes blatantly obvious that the narrator is crazy.  He explains in detail how every night for a week he entered “the old man’s”, who I interpreted as his master, room and watched him sleep.  What kind of normal man would sneak into another man’s room at midnight each night to watch him sleep for hours.  The narrator had some kind of perverted fixation on the old man’s eye.  It drives him to kill the old man so that the eye won’t bother him anymore.  If that doesn’t say madness I don’t know what does.  It is completely crazy that someone would argue that they aren’t mad when an eyeball drives them to murder.  I found it interesting that in the first paragraph the narrator stated “The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them.” (GASS 13) and that the final reason the narrator goes crazy is the beating of the old man’s heart.  A heartbeat isn’t something that is easily heard so I found it ironic that the beating of the old man’s heart is what drove the narrator to commit murder.  If the disease had not strengthened the narrator’s senses he wouldn’t have been able to hear the heartbeat and it might not have driven him to murder the old man.  I think that irony is one of the main themes in this story, that is why Poe included the blurb about the narrator’s senses.  Had his senses not been better than usual he never would have heard the heartbeat after he had killed the old man.  Had he not been mad he might not have killed the man at all to begin with.  This is a great example of gothic literature because it is very ominous, very strange.  I liked all of the mystery that was included in this story.