Entry Two: Poe

"The Tell-Tale Heart"
Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

""It was open -- wide, wide open -- and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness -- all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but
I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the rays as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot."










                                                                                                                (image source)

Poe is one of the most infamous authors when it comes to horror; his words easily strike fear in the people who read his work, whether it be for their own safety or those of the characters who may meet an untimely fate. His words are simple, his structure precise, and the tone alone is enough to make someone shiver.

Which might be why I've enjoyed reading him for most of my student career.

This passage in-particular is something that caught my eye. It's a moment for the narrator where he expresses a dramatic shift in his character. Before this point, the man the narrator has been planning to kill has always been described as a man; nothing in his character has alluded to anything less. There's mention of his greying hair, his older eyes; he's even described as a "very profound old man". But at this moment, the humanity is stripped away, and all that the narrator can see is the dreadful eye that he's come to loathe.

It's fascinating that the one trait the narrator focuses on is the eye. For many, the eye is a window to the soul, or to a person's true self. Emotions are portrayed through the eyes more so than many other means of expression, and it's been said that the eyes show all. With this in mind, I wonder why the narrator has such a dire hatred for the old man's eyes.

It's also intriguing to me because at the beginning of the story, the narrator admits that the old man has done him no wrong. In fact, at that time, the narrator loved him. So it's something peculiar to me that the narrator would have such a palpable hatred for the man's eyes in such a way that he forgets that his man is a man. But the narrator focuses on the pale blue eyes that haunt him so much that after a week of observing the elderly man sleep, the narrator murders him in cold blood.

The color of the man's eyes, a grey-blue, is something else that struck me. The color reminds me of the ocean, or a thick fog in the dead of night. Both of these things do a good job of keeping secrets or hiding things, and a part of me feels like the old man's eyes bother the narrator in such a way because he knows that secrets are being kept there. The narrator has no way of deciphering these secrets, so instead of trying to figure them out, they drive him to get rid of the old man before this certain unknown drives him as insane.

Which, ultimately, the murder of the old man does on it's own already.