Sadism in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe - 1881 Words

The tell-tale Sadist: Sadism and Masochism in â€Å"The tell-tale heart† Many of Poe’s tales portray characters which intently harm other creatures or people and enjoy the process of doing so. This tendency which Poe himself called â€Å"the spirit of perverseness†(Poe 10) in The Black Cat is described as the need to cause pain to other being without any reason, evil per se. However, from a psychological point of view, this spirit of perverseness would be labeled as sadism and its source may be traced by making a deep analysis of the character’s psyche. It will be posed that the character participant narrator in the tell-tale heart does not kill the old man as an act of pure evilness or spirit of perverseness, but rather the source of his/her†¦show more content†¦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 â€Å"for example castration, mutilatio n, 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. â€Å"It can often be recognized that the masochism is nothing but a continuation of the sadism turning against ones 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 â€Å"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 manShow MoreRelatedThe Tell Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe2007 Words   |  9 PagesThe Tell Tale Heart Research Paper In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe delights readers to a very thought out and psychological based short story of a very in depth murder from the murderer’s perspective. In â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart: Overview† it is proven that: â€Å"One of the most powerful contributions that Edgar Allan Poe made to the short story genre was his insistence that every element of the work contribute to the story’s overall effect. Poe frequently gave this aesthetic demand realistic