Sadism in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Essay Example

and cautiously during the sexual act and being aroused by the sight of his/her anatomy[1]. Also, the narrator observes the old man sleeping which seems to be a classical behaviour of lovers. This is plainly stated by the narrator himself: “I looked in upon him while he slept” [2](Poe 4).

Another instance of this resemblance between his/her descriptions of the crime and the sexual act can be seen when he is actually about to perform the crime on the eighth night. It was the beating of the old man” (Poe 5) which compelled him to perform his objective, and in this point the heart begins to be the main motif in the tale and symbolizes many things. First of all, the beating of the heart symbolizes the old man’s fear, as shown in this quote: “The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! ” (Poe 5) Secondly, his heart beating in crescendo fed the narrator’s sadism.

This is probably so because the heart beating indicates a shot of adrenalin and strong feelings similar to the ones involved in sexual excitement. It can also be perceived that the narrator felt elated by the man’s “mortal” fear and therefore the heart also becomes an equivalent of pleasure and later on displeasure. The narrator’s acuteness of the senses is, as well, a feature of sexual arousal. Hearing becomes an essential part of feeling pleasure through torturing the old man; the narrator can just get evidence of this by hearing the heat beating and seeing him restless.

Furthermore, during the seconds prior to the murdering of the old man, the narrator uses the word

“refrained” (Poe 6), which may be considered part of the behaviour of lovers since refrain prolongs the pleasure and this is what actually seems to provoke on the narrator. The murdering itself also appears to connote eroticism as “he (the old man) shrieked once” (Poe 6), while the narrator “smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. ” (Poe 6) Again the narrator’s pleasure seems to play an important role as part of the act of murdering.

Therefore, murdering and physical pleasure are linked by the ecstatic exclamations of the narrator and his/her description reassembling the sexual act. An analysis of the narrator’s psyche also requires an analysis of his/her gender, which is not explicitly said. However, it can be inferred that he is a man because “The sexuality of most men shows a taint of aggression” (Freud, 1914) and as a result creates in them a greater tendency to sadism. This does not mean that sadism is a common feature of men’s sexual behaviour, it is a sexual aberration but gender influences this tendency.

Besides aggression, according to Lacan, is represented through certain images “for example castration, mutilation, devouring” (Glowinsky, 2001) and it should be born in mind that the narrator mutilates his victim in order to hide it, which provides extra evidence of the narrator’s aggressiveness. In addition, a homosexual love for the old man would create a greater conflict in the mind of the narrator and a greater difficulty to fulfill his sexual desire in a normal way. It can often be recognized that the masochism is nothing but a continuation of the sadism turning against one's own person in which the latter

at first takes the place of the sexual object. ” ( Freud, 1914)

Indeed, masochism seems to derive from the sadist drive. It is usually believed that victimizer becomes victim given certain circumstances and this may provoke pleasure as well. In the philosophy of composition, Poe unintentionally provides a good definition of masochism by talking about “the human thirst for self-torture. Indicating the eagerness of men to feel displeasure or even pain, this may be done in innocent ways (by suffering through fiction) or by remaining or looking for situation that might be painful. In the tale-tell heart, the murderer after having tormented the old man becomes the tormented one by his own guilt and the beating heart of the old man’s corpse. Although the masochist tendency of the narrator becomes more noticeable by the end of the story and this will be analyzed later on, the murderer seems to present this tendency at the beginning of the tale.

The old man’s eye seems to obsess the narrator and feeds his fantasies. He fears and dreads the eye. Even in his description of the eye, it can be perceived the disgust he feels: “he had the eye of a vulture- a pale blue eye with a film over it. ” (Poe 3) Here the word vulture connotes the idea of a threat as vultures are birds of prey which may attack surreptitiously. Another evidence of his irrational fear for the eye is when he says “whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold. ”(Poe 3) Therefore, it may be wondered why he would not simply leave the house if the eye provoked such negative feelings in

him.

The fact that he stays with the old man and observes at night his sleep and consequently his fearful eye can be considered a feature of his masochist frame. In his deranged mind, the eye observes him and knows his faults; it can tell that he desires the old man which is perhaps his secret. As a result, the eye tortures him and the narrator is its pray, the victim of his own desire for the old man but symbolized by the eye. Not to mention the pun that the words “eye” and “I” brings about: the eye reflects the narrator’s “I”, his own true self, something which he probably does not want to see due to the reason previously mentioned.

Nevertheless, the narrator’s masochist behaviour may be more clearly grasp when his own head tricks him and leads him to confess his crime. Asselinau discusses masochism in Poe’s works: “It is this perverse instinct [masochism] which impels them [Poe’s heroes] to sink deeper into their nightmares and eventually surrender to madness and confess their crime publicly at the end in order to be punished and thus suffer still more […] neutralizes the instinct of self-preservation and turns into a passionate desire for self-destruction” (Asselineau, 1970)

Following Asselineau’s trait of thought, the steps mentioned seem to apply to the “hero” in question since first he sinks into nightmare as he hears the hellish heart beating: “ It grew louder-louder- louder! ” (Poe 7) and he “raved” (Poe 7) and “swore” (Poe 7) while the noise goes in crescendo. Secondly, in spite of the punishment, which of course will lead him to death, the narrator confesses his crime

to the police by saying “Villains! […] I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! -here, here! -it is the beating of his hideous heart! (Poe 8) so any sense of self protection disappears and he becomes defenseless, eager to be punished and suffer. In addition, the police become part of his masochist delirium as he thinks that they are purposely mocking him by pretending not to hear the heart beating. “They hear! - They suspected! - They knew! - they were making a mockery of my horror” (Poe 7) are the thoughts of the narrator while the heart torments him. He appears to believe that the police is tormenting him as well because they know his crime but pretend not to and enjoy watching his suffering.

Here, the narrator’s masochist/sadist frame is projected onto the figure of the police as he chooses to see them as sadists who take pleasure in his pain. In conclusion, the narrator’s inability to accept his own sexual desire and love for another man led him to the incapacity to merge desire as a structure within the mind and the physical act which is the product of that desire. Therefore, frustration and what he might have consired the wrong investment over the libidinal object provoked in him a deviation over the sexual norm and he could not channel his sexual desire for the old man in any other way that was not aggressive.

Pleasure also deviates and the narrator seems only to be able to feel it by causing pain and then needs to be caused pain. It can be said that in this tale sexual drives and murderous instinct are

interwoven by the inability of the narrator to fulfill his desires and they function as a single force together with the need of the unconscious to express itself and do something about this conflict. It may be plausible that the conflict was solved by the development of a neurosis that is manifested by a sadist/masochist tendency which conducts the narrator even to the extreme of murdering his object of love.