A Report on The Tell-tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

The Tell-tale Heart is probably the most iconic short story of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The story is either approached simplistically as a horror story, encompassing some paranormal features, or, from a more modernist perspective, as a complex psychological portrait of a disturbed unnamed narrator, whose guilt makes him hear the heart beating of an old man he has just murdered.

According to the gothic principles in literature, and to Edgar Allan Poe, “good literature must either create truth or evoke emotions”. And these two traits more than other which characterize his literary oeuvre. However, as it is the case with many avant-gardist authors, Poe was originally negatively critiqued for his inclination for depraved themes. Woodberry (1885), for example, considers Poe’s literature, and The Tell-tale Heart more precisely, “a tale of conscious”, arguing that Poe’s attention to death and murders details only reflect his deranged personality. But nowadays, Edgar Allan Poe became identified as the forefather of the gothic movement and regarded as an admirable writer of psychological thrillers.

The Tell-tale Heart is equally a very good example of a short story told from a first person narrative perspective. It is an excellent illustration of how this technique can produce an effect on the reader and invite them to think or many interpretations as possible.

Analysis

a. The title

The title gives the first impression about the story, and informs the reader about what to expect. In the case of the tell-tale heart, it is mystery which is introduced from the title itself.

The title refers to both the narrator’s heart, the old man’s heart, and to the tales told by both: at the most obvious level, the old man’s heart tells tales to the narrator and the reader as well: we first hear his heart beat during the eighth night, and when he realizes that something is not right in his room, his heart tells again a tale of fear, which, in its turn, makes the narrator extremely angry and gives him the motive to carry out his horrific plan.

The next time the old man’s heart is heard is when he is dead and cut up into pieces! But since dead hearts don’t beat, it could be interpreted as the narrator’s own guilt which is projected onto the dead man’s heart, thus, telling us a tale of guilt and culpability. And this last refers to the narrator’s heart.

b. The plot

In the Tell-tale heart, Poe experiments a rather modernist plot, one which comprises several ups and downs and which does not conventionally meet the expectations of readers. In the exposition, the narrator steps in by claiming that he is not insane, and offers “the tale” as a proof, he reveals who he is (and who he is not), and imparts his decision to kill the old man’s eye (and not the old man himself).

The conflict, which sets off the complication of the story, may seem at first glance that it is “the eye” since it is what bothers him the most (or the only thing which bothers him at all). Moreover, the narrator goes to the old man’s room every night for a week, ready to do the dirty deed. But since the sleeping man won’t open his “offending” eye, the narrator can’t kill him. However, let us not forget that the story is more psychological than material, and that the eye wouldn’t make the same effect on any other person than the narrator himself. Thus, the conflict would more reasonably better be considered as an internal/psychological conflict, as it happens inside of the narrator.

All the following escalading events between the decision to kill the man and the murder itself constitute the rising action, until the climax, where the narrator kills the old man (with his own bed and then cuts up the body and hides it under the bedroom floor).

What could be viewed as unconventional in this story is that the resolution of this murder is simply the initial situation and preparatory phase of another “sub-plot”. In other words, many critics qualify this plot as a two-phases plot, or two complementary plots with two climaxes: After committing the deed and cleaning all the traces, the police came to check if everything is fine. The narrator is calm and put together when they showed up first. He even proposed giving them a guided tour of the house. And then invites them to old man’s bedroom. All that before hearing the “terrible noise”. This is where a second climax could be detected: when the heartbeat gets unbearably louder, the narrator came up clean about the murder and revealed the hiding place of the corpse.

c. The narrative perspective

Most Poe’s stories are told from a first-person unreliable point of view. The narrator of the tell-tale heart is trying to prove his sanity, but admits that due to his intensely powerful sense of hearing, he can “hear all things in the heaven and in the earth and many things in hell” (ref). Thus, unless the story is seen from a purely supernatural perspective, the narrator is being irrational or not tightly gripping reality.

The narrator also infers that he is a know-it-all type of storyteller, he tells us what the old man thinks and how he feels. It could be argued that the narrator’s insight into the man’s head is just a reflexion of his own experience. At any rate, Unreliable narrators represent a basic aspect of what humans can be, or the confusion one can find themselves in when they can’t entirely recall events or perceive reality accurately. However, In the tell-tale heart, this unreliability is taken to the extreme.

The scary aspect in this technique it is so much compelling , that readers may end up suspecting that their unreliability can take over and consequently become like the narrator, or victims of a person like the narrator.

Analysis of characters

a. The narrator

The tell-tale heart narrator is a very complex character: nervous, “very dreadfully nervous”, paranoid and seems not to know the difference between real and unreal. He seems to be completely alone and friendless, and hardly gets to sleep (the awakened nights he describes). This is why it is hard not to feel compassionate for him.

Poe does not explicitly tell us who the narrator is, his gender, or his relation with his victim. One explanation to that is that Poe tries to generalize, claiming previously (in The Imp of the Perverse, ref) that all people are driven to murder and self (and others) - destructive acts thanks to their perverse and uncontrollable impulses.

Though the narrator seems to be a combination of nerves, murderous impulses, and extreme sensory perceptions, he is telling the story in a very passionate and exquisite way, probably out of some hope of redemption or for cure.

b. The old man

Though the old man may appear to be flat, he is even more of a mystery than the murder himself: We know he has money (the narrator shows his “treasures” to the police), he has a blue eye that the narrator despises, that he is a sound sleeper, and that he suspect nothing of the premeditation to murdering him (we can assume this since he leaves his bedroom door unlocked).

Based on this, and coupling it with an attentive reading to some passages of the story, we may infer that it is the old man who is mad: he fits neatly into the narrator’s definition of madness: destroyed or dulled senses (he senses are definitely dulled as he only hears his murderer on the eighth night) and doesn’t seem to have the slightest idea about what’s going on. If this standpoint is adopted, then the narrator is put in an even more negative spotlight.

Another possible reading of the character of the old man is that he is maybe not, after all, as nice as the narrator had described him (in that case the “nice” description would be taken as ironic): A neighbour, suspicious about what’s happening on in the house of “a nice” old man, would not be so quick to call the police station upon hearing a single scream. We don’t know if the suspicion here is directed toward the old man, or the narrator or both , but it is possible that the narrator was not the only man afraid of the old man.

American writer and critic Toni Morison, argues in her book Playing in the Dark: Witness in the Literary Imagination, that many Poe’s stories are part of the southern gothic tradition in that they express “anxiety over the institution of slavery in a failed, coded fashion” (1992). her reading of the tell-tale heart suggests that the relation between the narrator and the old man is a relation Master/Slave. she equally argues that the pale blue eye is nothing but a symbol of dominance, superiority, and maybe disgust.

This interpretation also makes a case for the narrator’s nervousness, as a slave and the possibility of him having been exposed to horror. It also explains why the narrator took so much pleasure in violating the man’s privacy and the sanctity of his bedroom (eight successive nights).

The study of the setting

We don’t know where the narrator is while he is telling the story of murder. The story takes place inside a random old house about which few details are directly given. We are told that the old man keeps has his shutters tightly locked (of fear of robbery, the narrator explains) , and the house might be in an urban area (based on the neighbour’s closeness , and the speed with which the police officers showed up).

As to the interior of the house, we are only introduced (but with no detailed description) to of the old man’s room where the murder takes place. The absence of the detailed description creates an even more scary setting where only darkness is mentioned. Moreover, an ideal bedroom is supposed to be a private place where we can rest with no fear (sanctuary), and the narrator violates the sanctity of the bedroom. the night spying is even more terrifying than the murder itself.

The Study of Style

The stylistic prestation of Poe is always splendid, he reflects his chaotic mind and tendency of raising suspense and fear in his choice of words and types of sentences. The tell-tale heart is a combination of precise and exquisitely worded passages, yet rough and thought-provoking sentences.

Within the ten-paragraph frame of the tell-tale heart, we see many groups of short sentences, and some other long sentences. But interestingly enough, the long sentences are less ambiguous and frustrating than the short ones: the long sentences give us precise descriptions, while the short ones leave us grasping for meaning (of course, this is not to generalize, for there are examples of the reverse).

The Tone

While some Poe stories have a fun and playful aspect despite their theme of death, the tell-tale heart makes us sad and compassionate at the same time. The narrator is so pitiful, that readers can’t’ help but feel sympathy for him and for distorted sense of reality. However, on the first read, we may not feel this sadness, we are somehow amused by the narrator ridiculous arguments. But upon reflection, we realize we’ve read the story of a man in an advanced state of stress and on the verge of mental breakdown. All these feelings are conveyed through the nervous and frantic tone of the story.

Conclusion

The tell-tale heart is a story that can offer a beginner in literary analysis a glimpse into what a subjective story is. It could be read from many perspectives, each could be considered as a reflection of the inner self of the reader. It is also a good introductory text to modernist literature, because of the unconventional plot, and the complexity of the character which takes us away from the usual reading/analysis standards.