In my further readings of Poe's classic chilling tales, I came across The Telltale Heart. I hadn't read it all the way through, until now, and was very disturbed by the events of the story. After I finished reading, I was left with a question. What would drive someone to kill another person, simply because of a disturbing bodily feature? My curiosity prompted me to do some digging, which lead me to a very startling fact. This story was about the dark side of humanity, or rather the shadowy region of our being that we suppress for fear of consequences . With this in mind this story poses a few very important questions.
1. Is it possible that the things which disturb us in others are reflections of our own darkness? The man in the story was terrified by the old man's eye, which drove him to commit the violent act of murder. If the eyes are the window to the soul, could it be that he saw something in that eye that exposed a dark secret in his own soul?
2. Could such a story be an early exploration of criminal psychology? We have the crime, we have the guilty party, and we have the victim. What we don't have in the story is a true motive, only hints at what it could be. The killer acted out of his fear of the old man's eye, though nothing is said that would explain his actions. The events and outcome of the story itself suggest that the killer was disturbed by something. Thusly, there would be a need to explore that fact further.
Over all, It was a chilling, yet very entertaining story that gave a look at the darkness in all of us. I feel that without this story, the way we investigate certain crimes would be very different today.
The Tell-Tale Heart always brings to mind the idea of a bully to me. Not that bullies go so far as to murder someone, but the question of why someone would bully. I think a lot of times (as what I interpret in this story) bullies use taunting or torturing another person to (unsuccessfully) deal with issues of their own. They can't handle the darkness inside of them (either due to insecurity or abuse to themselves) so they have to make someone else feel that pain. It is sad to know that someone hurts so badly that the only way they can deal with it is to hurt another person.
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