Essay on The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

Analyze how the speaker in “The Tell-tale Heart” is an insane and cold-blooded man.

Poe’s literature offers great understanding of human nature in regards to the evil tendencies
inside a person’s mind and the dark parts every human’s soul beholds. Among his short stories,
we discover accounts filled with discernment about the different mental disorders that a human
mind can develop and even a demonstration of the extremes of evilness an individual may reach.
In this case, The Tell-Tale Heart shows an insane and cold-blooded speaker who builds up an
extraordinary clever story to present himself as an innocent man forced by his circumstances to
commit a homicide.

First of all, in order to avoid ambiguity and subjectivity it is necessary to establish a consensus
about the technical terms we will use in this essay. For instance, the meanings of insane and
cold-blooded are common words to refer to specific kinds of people. First, insane describes the
brain of a person who acts according to patterns which are unusual or irrational because they
contradict what is determined as normal behaviors inside the Psiquis of a sane person, in other
words, insane stands for crazy.

On the other hand, we say that a cold-blooded person is one who does not feel empathy for
other’s pain. Their blood is as cold as ice, so they are not touched by human tragedies or painful
episodes, they are not able to comprehend other’s feelings and emotions, although they are
capable of faking them. To sum up, insanity and lack of empathy are the main characteristics of
Psychopathy, according to the DMIV: “general pattern of contempt and violation of the rights of
others” ( ) It also mentions that people with this mental disorder cheat and manipulate to get
away with their purposes and to satisfy their own desires.

The main evidence of the fact that the speaker is a cold-blooded man building up his way out of
guiltyness are the several times during the story where he tries to manipulate the reader by
claiming that he is not mad but instead the holder of a special power which allowed him to
proceed appropriately as it was necessary. The speaker mentions his power when he starts the
telling the details of the week before the murderer, he talks about the eighth night stalking the old
man during his sleep: “Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own power -of my
sagacity”.
With this quotation the speaker is not only assuming that he has powers but also presenting
himself as someone superior, which is a symptom of grandeur mania, another characteristic of
Psychopaths. Moreover, as he has a special skill, he is implying that it needed to be used to end
with the trouble, hence, committing the murder.