Animal/Dehumanization/Dissociation
"I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye."
From the very beginning of the tale, the narrator refers to the old man's eye as being "the eye of a vulture" and recognizes it as an "Evil Eye", even though he harbors no hate or thinks no evil of the old man. The narrator uses the image of a vulture, a frightful, scavenging bird of prey, not only to dehumanize his victim, but also to further compound the danger that the eye presented to him. In his obsession, he fixates so much on the eye, that he removes it from the old man almost completely. On the eighth night the narrator even says, "I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot". This is part of the final push that sets the narrator off on his violent murder of the old man.
So we see that "for the narrator, who says he loved the old man, the vulture eye seems to have an existence of its own apart from [him]" (Tucker). It is clear that by using the image of a vulture and fixating solely on the eye, the narrator is able to dehumanize the old man and dissociate him from the the eye, which he intends to destroy, allowing the narrator to more easily kill the old man. But even after the old man is dead the narrator commits one final act of dehumanization, in which he dismembers the victim's body, reducing him to pieces of what was once a man. Although he states that it was a clever way to hide the body, it seems to go beyond this in an act to completely eliminate the thought of the victim from the narrator, and the guilt he would have for the death of the innocent old man.
So we see that "for the narrator, who says he loved the old man, the vulture eye seems to have an existence of its own apart from [him]" (Tucker). It is clear that by using the image of a vulture and fixating solely on the eye, the narrator is able to dehumanize the old man and dissociate him from the the eye, which he intends to destroy, allowing the narrator to more easily kill the old man. But even after the old man is dead the narrator commits one final act of dehumanization, in which he dismembers the victim's body, reducing him to pieces of what was once a man. Although he states that it was a clever way to hide the body, it seems to go beyond this in an act to completely eliminate the thought of the victim from the narrator, and the guilt he would have for the death of the innocent old man.