"The Tell-Tale Heart"

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Do you know what was the author's message in "The Tell-Tale Heart".

-- Anonymous, May 26, 2001

Answers

Though Poe detested messages as such(he was striving for effect) you might see this as a study of "The Imp of the Perverse" a story which explains this kind of criminal mind besides giving a short example. Guilt makes man confess- and(another Poe theme)the dead never go away completely. Their shadow crushes and destroys. A little bit of the creeping dissatisfaction with ugliness and annoyances for the hypersensitive also is the cry of Poe's aesthetic soul- grotesquely exagerrated. Maybe another message is taking what is in yourself to the extreme- and its results. But don't miss the point. The crescendo, until the reader is breathing and heart beating in time with the rising suspense and climax of obsession up to the confession, is meant to orchestrate the reader into feeling the story as closely as possible.

-- Anonymous, May 27, 2001

I think the message of this story could be interpreted any way, depending on your depth of thinking, your state of mind, and what you want to hear from it. I think it is so deep, I love this writing.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

felicia ings is a very cool person when you get to know her.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001

So, you'd like to know an answer eh? Well, okay.

I believe that the author wanted to use logic and some other literary things to explain that guilt and fear drives an innocent man crazy. A crime commited always have a drawback and lets a person become frightened. It was a bit of confusing, yet you can't blame him. He lived a sorrowful life.

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001


i wanna no y there is no pictures from the tell tale heart?imma doin a prject and i need some pictures

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002


i wanna no y there is no pictures from the tell tale heart?imma doin a project and i need some pictures

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2002

this is a great story...

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2002

I found that this story was very invigurating. There was a lot of suspence and horror. Edgar Allen Poe seems demented by this story. He made it sound like the old man deserved to die because he was blind and he scared the main character. All in all it was alright.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2002

I think Poe is trying to show how he likes to touch himself at night. You can see clearly throuhout Poe's literary work That one of his pleasures in life is eating poop. Poe uses Ironic irony to display, his new found obseesion with small children

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2003

The Tell Tale Heart is written to illustrate a killers fall into madness. He shows how the beat of a human heart can represent the time one has left to live; with every tick of the clock the beat of the heart gets closes to its final tick. The eye in the story is used to represent the killer’s ego or his “I.” He is obsessed with destroying the “eye” because it is one’s ego/I that is heir to death. Throughout the story the killer identifies with the old man many times, which leads us to believe that in killing the old man’s “eye,” the killer is killing his “I” metaphorically speaking. It is not the old man whom the killer wants destroyed it is the “eye.” There is absolutely no way this story can be interpreted as having hidden meaning that link towards sex or child molestation. It would have to take a person with this on their mind to come to this conclusion!

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2003


In many of Poe's works he describes the evil drive in men to kill and commit sin. He likes to focus on the downward spiral of the human race instead of romanticising them. He is definitely not a believer of the human evolving into something more, in fact he believes the exact opposite. This idea, in some ways is Biblical, man is sinful, but Poe does take the idea rather far. He just believes, and therefore wants the world to believe that man is sinful, but do have some good in them. Good that can drive them mad, and drive them to confess their sin!!!!!!11

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2003

Tell-tale heart is all about how the narrator, is trying to convice us that he is clearly mad, but he tries anyway to say that he isn't. The old man staying with him, has this evil eye, to him anyway, he calls it a vulture eye, and what do vultures do, prey on the dead, so he assumes that this eye is searching for some mysterious kind of donkey magic, and he clearly has created his own genre of writing.Its called smurf-smurf. He clearly enjoys the delicacey of asparugus dipped in chocolate, and you shouldn't ask dumb questions

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2003

HAHAHA!!!!

holy shit you guys are funny!

-- Anonymous, August 13, 2003


Maybe Poe felt like a child. The old man could represent society, meaning everyone that tells you what you should or shouldn't do, as in family, employers and so on. The eye could represent the feeling that everyone is always watching you waiting for you to slip and fall. Perhaps Poe always felt an immense pressure to do the right thing. Maybe he felt like a failure. The old man living in the house who seemed to mean well never directly harmed the narrator but posed as a threat because he simply could see everything that the narrator did. He had to kill him because he was tired of being watched and being judged. He killed him because he thought he could get away with it, and he merely did. His conscience is his own sabateur though. He cannot cope with the guilt. He places the chair over the floor boards where the body is hidden because he is trying to hush the guilt. He hears the pounding and thinks it's the dead man's when most likely it is his own increasing in pulse as he gets nervous. Of course he has to project his guilt to something else because he cannot allow himself to exist in the reality that he's created. He has to disassociate himself. I think maybe Poe is trying to say that he wishes he could find a way to stop everyone from watching him. Hewould stamp out the judging eye if he could. But in the end he chooses to be doomed. He knows he'll never be free from his own prison.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2003

The message in the story is about guilt. The narrator cannot live with his conscience after he murders the old man due to the extreme feeling of guilt that he experiences.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2003


I think Poe was thinking about gofers by using his heart beat to drive him bannanas. The jupiter moons are in alinement so he hears the gofers meowing in the woodland treetops

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2003

I think poe was thinking of the great american woodland beaver like all of us guys think of. He was thinking of gouging this eye out and dipping his beaver in there because it was a moist wet hole. The bird is in his nest the eagle has landed

-- Anonymous, November 04, 2003

I think that Poe was just trying to vent his feelings of guilt for something that he had done in his past (such as his bad relationship with his father). In his next book, Pit and the Pendulum, i think that this is simply the aftermath of this guilt, and he coped with it by drinking- which gave his story the sense of despair and hopelessness/madness.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2003

I personally think that Poe was mad himself & to express his madness he wrote books. The message was that guilt controls people. This is very true. He also led us to believe that or was trying make us think that he was totally sane.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2003

I think that Poe is/was a very talented writer. He does an amazing job writing how the character is feeling at all times. It is ver easy to put yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. And the way he puts infesses on the smallest details. Things that you would think didn't really matter until her goes into such detail with them. Personally this is one of my favorite short stories because it is full of so many hidden ideas.

-- Anonymous, December 02, 2003

the message was the guilt alway brought you down. if you did not have guilt you would not get caught a long time ago. the only reason he got cought was becase he felt gulit and had to say it or it felt like he was gong to die.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2003

You guys are all slow. Poe was trying to use the Tell Tale Heart to show his own dissatisfaction with himself and his own life. He was using the Eye as "I" and he was disgusted with what he saw in himself. This is supported in The pit and The Pendulum where the main Character is fighting for survival. Poe is fighting to either go under in a confused alcohol stupor or pull out.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2004

I think it was the conflict of mind over matter. The speaker loved the old man but found himself scared of his eye. The nagging of it drove him into madness and eventually murder.

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2004

same here y r there no pictures i got a project 2 do.

-- Anonymous, December 06, 2004

That was one crazy ass man :\

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2005

I gota do i project too! Its like a poster thing X_X

-- Anonymous, February 07, 2005

How can you learn anything from a madman. This story was for pure entertainment only. We see how crazy the man was by taking hours just to enter the room with the door cracked open. Learning morals from a madman is like learning to drive with a blind teacher. Poe was messed up himself but he did not intend to create a moral. Meaning does not always stand out.

-- Anonymous, February 08, 2005

can any of ya help im doing the tell tale heart but it to hard can any of ya find me any hiden meaings

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2005

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