The Tell-Tale Heart is one of the “scary” short stories by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843. This is the story told by the man whose name is unknown to the reader. This man killed the old man, who lived with him under one roof. The narrator insists on his sanity, explaining the murder to the fact that the old man was the evil “vulture eye” with a thorn, that led the murderer in a rage. In his confession, the killer sets out in detail the path that he took before committing the crime and then to revelations. He accurately calculated everything and one night strangled the old man in his room. Then calmly dismembered the corpse and hid the remains under the floorboards, leaving no trace. However, when the police came in the morning to the house with a search warrant, the murderer put himself, as allegedly heard a loud knock of heart of the victim from under the floorboards and was sure that the police heard it too, but purposely torment him, pretending not knowing the truth.
It remains unclear who was the narrator for the killed the old man, maybe he was a father to him, and maybe the killer worked in his house as a servant. Also, the cause of severe irritation of the killer by evil eye of the victim is not disclosed, perhaps the “vulture eye” represents a secret that is oppressing narrator, or the dark power of the man over him. Background of the relationship between the two characters remains unknown, in sharp contrast with the meticulous, step-by-step description of the killing and subsequent recognition.
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Analysis of works
This story of Edgar Allan Poe is minimalistic. The author cuts away all the excess, leaving only what was necessary to present the essence of the story. From the very beginning of the novella, every word serves for purpose – intense progress through the story. “The tell-tale heart” is a vivid example of realization of the theory of Edgar Allan Poe on how to write short stories.
The build of the story
The narrative begins with the moment when the event is already in full swing. The killer, on behalf of whom is the story, sets out the history to some interlocutor — it could be the investigator, the judge, the inmate or a prison guard, a journalist, a roommate or a psychiatrist in the hospital. This cannot be determined.
The very first word in the story is shouting “True!” — shows that the narrator admits his guilt (Silverman, 30). At the same time, from the first lines, of which the reader learns nothing about the nature of the incident, the author captures his attention, as the narrator begins to frantically look for excuses and circumstances, in his view, mitigating his guilt. The killer is obviously trying to understand the causes of the incident and therefore tries to tell everything in great detail. As a result, his story turns into a dissection of what has happened to him in horror.
The driving force of the novel is not the insistence of the killer of his innocence, as one would expect, and that is pretty typical of stories with a criminal plot, and assurances that he is “sane”, in that he’s not crazy. The killer himself does not realize that, while not denying his guilt, he actually recognizes it. And this, in turn, raises doubt in his adequacy, because he’s trying to prove not the most significant for himself at the moment, clearly not focusing in the assessment of the offense and placing the wrong priorities. The denial of his madness, he is arguing with regularity, reasonableness and accuracy of his actions — trying to find a rational explanation for his irrational behavior.
Is this intentional rationality, on the contrary, he only emphasizes the lack of motivation for the assassination (“I had no goal, no passion”). Despite this, by his own admission, the idea of the murder haunted him day and night. The scene of the denouement of history is a demonstration of subconscious feelings of guilt, which manifested itself so intricately in the form of auditory hallucinations. As for many other characters in Gothic literature, the nature of the narrator is manifested in the moment of the highest nervous tension.
Desperately denying his own madness, he, on the contrary, proves compelling. Contemporaries on this dilemma should be extremely interesting, as in 1840-e years there was a fierce debate about the exemption from liability under the insanity of the accused.
Reliability of the version of the narrator
The narrator twice says that he is suffering from a special disease, which acutes perception. hero of another novel by Roderick Usher (“the fall of the house of Ushers”,1839) is suffering from similar diseases. In the story “the Conversation of Monos and Una” (1841) describes the feeling of a deceased person, one of them is extraordinary aggravation of feelings.
Returning to the history of the “heart-accuser”, it is impossible to determine how much can these claims of the narrator be trusted. Maybe heart beating loudly — a figment of his imagination, maybe he is really suffering from an exotic disease. If so, there can be found a rational explanation for the sounds they heard: perhaps they were from bugs-grinders Xestobium rufovillosum. The narrator also had the opportunity to hear them before the murder, when a disturbing silence was heard in the old man’s room. According to legend, hearing these bugs leads to death. Beetles are one of the subspecies during the mating ritual, banging their heads on a wooden surface; others produce sounds similar to the ticking. Henry David Thoreau in 1838 suggested that sometimes the noise made by these beetles, may resemble the heartbeat. Otherwise, these were only the hallucinations of the killer, the play of his imagination.
Personality and character relationships
The relationship between the old man and his killer in the story is undefined, as well as their names, position in society, occupation, place of residence. This uncertainty creates an ironic contrast with the detailed outlining of the story. The narrator may be a servant of man or, as most assume, his son. In this case, the ” vulture eye ” symbolizes the father’s supervision and, perhaps, imposing of his principles. The Griffin, on one hand a predatory bird, on the other – a scavenger, associated with death and decomposition. The desire to close “the eyes of the vulture”, in this case, symbolizes the liberation of the will and conscience of the murderer, liberation from the shackles of the dark otherworldly power of the man. Eyes can also mean some kind of mystery that connects two characters. It is noteworthy that the seven nights in a row, the narrator dared not kill the old man, when his eye was closed. And only when he saw his eye open, like an unlocked door to the soul or to the secrets of the old man, the murder took place.
It is noteworthy that the original text of Edgar Allan Poe is missing not only the names of the characters and instructions on linking their relationship, but also, due to the peculiarities of English grammar, the sex of the offender. In the story there is nothing that would imply the identity of the male protagonist, the author avoids descriptions of parts of his clothes, his employment and other details. The culprit could be a woman, young or old, and this assumption opens up several possible options for reading the story. Translated into many languages, to keep this uncertainty impossible, the story is traditionally played by men. This tradition is also maintained in an English speaking environment, for example, in radio dramas and film adaptations of the novel, and illustrators.
However, the relationship between the characters is not the main thing in this story. The author focused on the creation of the painting “the perfect crime”, when it seems that nothing can give up the murderer.
The place of narrative in the works of Edgar Allan Poe
Poet laureate Richard Wilbur has suggested that the short story “the tell-tale Heart” is a wonderful allegorical sonnet of Edgar Allan Poe “To science” (1829). The sonnet is a picture of the collision of exact knowledge and imagination. In “t the tell-tale Heart,” according to Wilber, the old man is the exact scientific knowledge, and the narrator is the intuitive knowledge (Harvey, 153).
- Harvey, Ronald C. The Critical History Of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym. New York: Garland Pub., 1998. Print.
- Silverman, Kenneth. New Essays On Poe’s Major Tales. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print.
