This document provides an analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". It discusses the plot, themes of guilt and madness, and applies Sigmund Freud's concepts of the id, ego and superego to analyze the psychology of the narrator. Specifically, it argues that the narrator is driven mainly by his ego in claiming sanity while describing the murder, and experiences a mental conflict represented by his intense hatred of the old man's eye and the guilt that ultimately overwhelms him.

1. Topic: Madness of servant in Tell-Tale Heart
Name : Makwana Ankita m.
Paper No :10
Roll No :1
Enrolment No:PG13101020
Year :2013-14
Semester : 3
Guidance : by Department of English

2. -By Edgar Allan Poe

3. Born:Edgar Poe
January 19, 1809
Boston, Massachusetts,United States
Died: October 7, 1849 (aged 40)
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Occupation: Poet, Editor.

4. About the story
Published in1843.
 It is told by an unnamed narrator who
endeavors to convince the reader of his
sanity, while describing a murder he
committed.
The story is set in a house occupied by
the narrator and an old man.
The main theme in “Tale Tell Heart” is
guilt.

5. Psychological aspects of narrator
Id
Ego
Superego

6. • Id, ego, and super-ego are the three parts of
the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund
Freud's structural model of the psyche; they
are the three theoretical constructs in terms
of whose activity and interaction our
mental life is described.

7. • According to this model of the psyche, the id is
the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the
superego plays the critical and moralizing role;
and the ego is the organized, realistic part that
mediates between the desires of the id and the
super-ego. The super-ego can stop one from doing
certain things that one's id may want to do.

8. • Edger Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”
shows a narrator being driven mainly by his ego.
• The narrator starts out by claiming that he is not mad
and continues to make this claim throughout the story
using a logical approach.

9. • Logically speaking a mad man would not be able
recount murder. One critic refers the narrator as
being “an egocentric who derives pleasure from
cruelty.” (Pritchard) This idea of the narrator
being egocentric (or self-centered) is supported by
another critic who says he show the stages of
“Ego-Evil.”

10. Mental Conflict
• Narrator of this story has a conflict of mental ability.
Characterization of the servant is displeasing.
• “TRUE! --Nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I
had been and am; but why will you say that I am
mad?” This line shows the condition of narrator, that
he is facing problem regarding his decision to murder
the old man. The word ‘Nervous’ explain that he is
nervous. The repeated word ‘Very, Very’ is shows the
unpleasant time of narrator. Here, the metal condition
of narrator is unpleasing.

11. • For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the
old man's room, in order to shine a sliver of light onto
the "evil eye“.
• The old man's vulture-eye is always closed, making it
impossible to "do the work". But one day the eye is
open and narrator who feels the eye torture him so he
hate this eye.
• He just wants to kill this eye.It is not possible for a
mental men.
• Only problem is vulture eye.

12. • In the end of the story, the narrator starts hearing
a terrible ticking noise, which gets louder and
louder until the narrator freaks out, confesses,
and points the police to the old man's body, state
that the sound is coming from the old man's
heart.

13. • Then narrator confesses his deeds and accepts that he
had killed the old man. He showed the pieces of body
of old man. Here reader can see that how terror of his
did cover the servant. Finally, he has accepted his
crime.
• So it is reflected that the mental condition of
narrator/servant was depressed.

14. Conclusion
• Poe’s character is neurotic . Guilt is major theme of
this story. Edgar Allen Poe is trying to convince the
reader that the main character feels guilty.