Uncanny In The Tell Tale Heart

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The Unconscious Feelings of Death
Death is an inevitable fate that affects everyone, although it is not commonly or comfortably discussed within many societies. The nature of death that makes it a taboo subject for many is the combination of fear and uncertainty regarding when death will occur and what lies beyond. Additionally, the way in which one dies also contributes to the unsettling plume that lingers behind death. There is an uncanny feeling that accompanies conversations of death, violent or not, shrouding it in mystery. The narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” is driven to commit murder by the workings of his unconscious mind. (Note: It is not specified in “The Tell-Tale Heart” what the gender of the narrator is. However, …show more content…
In the particular example that presents itself in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator can be seen as vigorously trying to repress the forces of the unconscious that lies within [him]. Perhaps the force that this [man] is trying to compulsively repress is the truth of who [he] really is, an insane [man]. With this theoretical scenario present, the questions of where the uncanny originates from, what causes it, and what lengths are taken in combating it can be answered. For instance, the narrator states, “Many a night just at midnight when all the world slept it has welled up from my own bosom…” (Poe 3). Here, the narrator suggests that the fear burning within him is the fact that his is a madman. As a result, [his] conscious mind sought to mediate this unconscious threat by latching this insanity on an object that can be destroyed, the old man’s “pale-blue eye” (Poe 1). By killing the eye he has killed his insanity but by hearing the “heart beat” after the murder, he realizes that he hasn’t killed his insanity at all. However, this attempt to further repress the unconscious, through destroying the old man’s eye, the gateway connecting the conscious and unconscious, somehow appears to have destroyed conscious control of [his] mind. Evidence of this theory can be found in the narrator’s “sense of hearing acute”, being able to hear the old man’s heart beating after death when in reality, this sound can only be heard emitting from a leaving person with the aid of a stethoscope (Poe
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