The Tell Tale Heart Guilt Essay

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Guilt is an awful feeling to have but it happens to many people, it takes control and makes people do think that they normally would not even consider. Edgar Allen Poe’s stories have the feeling of guilt in them and he used it to help express the theme of the story. In the story “The Tell Tale Heart” Poe used the symbol of the heart to reveal the idea of guilt being the worst punishment because the narrator was paranoid and confessed to his crime of killing the old man. In Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart” symbolism of the heartbeat was used to show how guilt is the worst form of punishment because the narrator got paranoid even before he killed the old man. The narrator heard the heartbeat of the old man before he killed him and that …show more content…
The narrator confessed to his crime because he kept hearing the heartbeat getting louder. As the narrator was talking to the officers he heard the sound that he had heard before murdering the old man. The narrator got paranoid for only he could hear the heart beating and the officers had not idea what he had done and he thought that if he could hear the sound, then the officers could too, but they couldn’t but he did not know that so he thought the officers were taunting him, “ I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder -- louder -- louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled” ( Poe 6). If he didn't feel guilty about murdering the old man then he would just join the conversation and ignored the heart but, the narrator, instead, noticed and the noticed that the officers did not hear so he ignored it but then it got louder. The narrator would not even have noticed the heart if he didn't feel guilty He was the only person in the room who could hear it because his paranoia was getting into his conscience and making him feel the guilt he tried to cover but failed
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