Analysis Of Anxiety And Fear In Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart
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Edgar Allen Poe is known for his chilling stories and poems that leave readers questioning his character’s, and his, sanity. In Poe’s story The Tell Tale Heart, the narrator kills an old man because of his eye’s appearance. Although there are many theories about the underlying meaning of this terrifying tale, I believe it is about how anxiety and fear control us more than we know. The Merriam- Webster Dictionary defines phobia as “an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something”. It is quite possible that persona is suffering from multiple phobias in this story. The first phobia persona appears to be suffering from is ommetaphobia or the fear of eyes. He truly loves the old man but can’t get over his eye. The 8th night, the night he finally killed the old man, the old man’s eyes were open. Persona said “It was open-wide, wide open- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (Poe 693). In many murder cases the culprits suffering from ommetaphobia have removed the victim’s eyes or taped their eyes shut pre or post mortem. Those who truly…show more content… While this seems to go back to ommetaphobia, eyes and seeing are not always related. Persona was scared of people thinking he was insane. He constantly reminds the readers and himself that he is not mad. However, he seems to believe that the old man’s eye can see more than any other human. When he’s hiding the body he replaces the floorboards so “no human eye-not even his- could have detected anything wrong” (Poe 694). He’s insinuating that the old man’s eye saw things that the normal human eye couldn’t. Many people who suffer from scopophobia kill people for “giving them a look” (Crim text book 123). The victim could have just looked over and smiled at them but scopophobia twists the mind into thinking the victim was judging them or being rude. The way the old man’s eye makes persona feel is a symptom of scopophobia that can drive them to