The Tell-Tale Heart Critical Lens

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The Truth Always Prevails Once, a child was trying to jump onto his bed that was out of his reach, and he broke a light bulb in his house; scared of accepting the truth, he put it in a bag and hid it from his mother. What happens ahead depends on what one thinks. Hiding the truth plays a big role in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe, and “The Necklace”, by Guy de Maupassant, through the psychotic man’s illusions and the necklace, where the truth is hidden for a while, but no one can stop the truth from coming forth and worse things happening. These stories express the theme of accepting and confessing the truth. Something that people should also do is work hard. Although working hard, one shouldn’t cross his limits. Such a theme is…show more content…
“’It looks tired,’ Daddy added. ‘Or maybe sick.’…the bird began to flutter…landing at our feet with a thud….’It’s dead,’ Mama said.” In this quote, one is shown that the bird attempts to move and/or fly when it is tired and possibly sick. But it is also shown that when the bird does this, and crosses its limits through overworking, it results in something as bad as death. This is also shown in another way by another person in this story. “Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, ‘Brother, Brother, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’…I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy of rain.” Doodle is intentionally pushed to move faster, even though he and his brother know that he is physically incapable of running that fast for that long. Here, he crosses his physical limits, and when he does so at his present physical condition, he dies due to trying something he knows he can’t do. It also means that he is related to the scarlet ibis bird, which also crosses its limits. Both of these events show that crossing limits, results in something bad…show more content…
“I think it was his eye!...I made up my mind to take the life of the old man…He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.” The narrator kills the old man with the reason of disliking the old man’s eye, which isn’t valid. Since he has no valid reason, it is murder, which is a mistake. “I felt that I must scream or die! And now – again!—hark! louder! louder!...’…I admit the deed!...It is the beating of his hideous heart!’” The narrator hears the beating of the heart of a dead man, which is biologically impossible, considering the old man’s legs, arms, and head were cut off. This happens because he is enveloped by the guilt of killing an innocent old man. Since he is mentally disturbed, he hears this fake heart beating, and confesses his hideous crime. The narrator encounters a situation where he is mentally disturbed and the charge of murder is on him. Had he confessed, and not gone mad hearing sounds that aren’t present, he would have been charged with murder, but still be mentally sane. It is shown that the narrator commits a mistake and doesn’t confess. This leads him to go mentally insane, whereas he could’ve stayed mentally sane through saying the

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