The Evil Eye Myth

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The story begins with narrator’s declaration: ‘‘True!—nervous, very, very dreadful nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?’’ He declares at once that he suffers from a ‘‘disease,’’ but suggests that it has not dulled his senses, therefore he cannot be called mad. The narrator points out that his mental disorder has actually caused his senses, especially his hearing, to become more acute. When he claims to have heard many things in heaven and hell, it is realized that sensory experiences are delusions. The narrator says that he cannot recall when the idea of killing the old man ‘‘entered’’ his ‘‘brain’’ and subsequently declares that the reason for his unsettling feeling and desire for murder was the old man’s “Evil Eye.” The motive established, the narrator proceeds to recount the cunning deliberation, the caution that he used in preparing to take the old man’s life, submitting it as…show more content…
Despite the difference in culture, race, region and ethnicity which holds the evil eye myth, it retains for the most part the same meaning across all walks of life no matter where the story is told. In its simplest form the eye is thought of as a look which clearly states that one intends to inflict harm, suffering or something bad to happen to the object in focus. In the story we first see the superstition manifesting when the narrator began to confess the crime to the police. Declaring that “He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it. When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye
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