Descension to Poe's Mind With The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 and died at the age of 40. Since childhood, he never had a normal life. Both of his parents were artists in their time. His father left his family for an unknown reason. His mother had to raise three children on her own. She died of tuberculosis when Poe was a child. Poe was adopted by a wealthy, prestigious family. His stepmother Frances Allan loved him so much and Poe loved her back. However, she dies at a young age as well. Poe’s unfortunate kept following him in his love life. Both his lovers died. All people that he ever loved died. Because of that, he lived his life under death’s shadow. Most of his works are about death. His efforts to escape from his fate were a dead end. Death became the main theme of his works. Most of Poe’s works reflect his unconsciousness. He used symbols to mourn the ones whom he loved. Poe was one of the best writers to use unconsciousness in the literature world. In his works, he is aware of the fact that his writing will wake up something in people’s unconsciousness. Therefore, he uses repetitions and details in his works to affect people. Edgar Allan Poe had a problem with death itself. The ones that he lost created a different point of view about death. He saw it as a blessing, a type of love and it affected him psychologically. Poe integrated his mentality to his works.

His very famous work The Tell-Tale Heart is a very good example of the integration of his mind into the stories. In this story, Poe created a character who is thought to be a mad person and he talks about the murder of an old man. The narrator explains that he has nothing to hate about that old man except his blueish vulture eye. The eye of this old man wakes up something inside the narrator. The narrator’s id takes the control of the mind and body. He can control these urges but at night his id takes control and starts to torture the old man. There is a contradiction in the narrator’s ability to love and hate. Poe shows us that sometimes people tend to harm those whom they love or need in their lives. Poe shows us this concept before Sigmund Freud made it his leading theory of the mind. The narrator loves this old man but he can’t accept his vulture eye. He sees this eye separate from the old man. By killing the old man, he will set him free from his eye and take this burden from his shoulders. The narrator might have bad memories about this eye but as readers, we can’t really understand it. We can not trust this narrator even if he wants us to do that. He claims to have sanity intact. However, he kills this old man with a perfect plan. Before he does that, he treats it with love. His actions are not consistent. He stacked between his ego and id. At night id, takes the wheel and does whatever “he” wants. At the end of the story, he loses his all senses. This time he is not stacked between anything. He is totally lost. He becomes paranoid. Poe was the underdog of his time. His works’ value was understood far later from his death. He was alien to the community of his time. Creating such characters shows us a part of this alienation. The narrator was judged by the “vulture eye” and Poe killed this eye with the owner of it. He has no moral codes. During his time, burying people alive was still a thing and he lost his value of life. Death comes naturally to him. In this story, he shows us his inner feelings about death and the violence that drives inside him. This eye can represent the judgmental eyes of people who criticize him. He killed all of them with this story of his. The narrator is the alter ego of Poe. It is also said that this is the eye of his father who judges him about his drinking problem but it stays as a rumor. Death interfered with his destiny, making him live an insecure, miserable, lonely life. In all this madness, Poe managed to take look at himself and reflected on his observations in an objective, creative to his works. He challenged death itself and madness.