The Tell- Tale Heart is one of the most fascinating and upsetting short stories
written by Edgar Allan Poe . In just ten paragraphs, he weaves a master piece
of psychological depth and depravation. It can be classified as a psychological
thriller , whereby Poe explores the different dimensions of a deranged mind,
the psychological understandings of a mentally ill person , and how and in what
way he tries to justify his gruesome acts to be proper.
Unravelling the course of events , the unnamed narrator is convinced that he is
normal , that he is considered “mad” by others but is in reality very normal; the
proof of which is the manner he unravels the account with utmost precision
and methodically .
The story follows the narrator’s obsession to kill an old man because he
hates his “ vulture eye” that scares him . All throughout the story he insists on
his sanity even after murdering an old man . He endeavours to convince his
addressee /reader of it while describing the murder .
The murder is carefully calculated , and the murderer hides the body by
dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards . Ultimately the narrator ‘s
guilt manifests itself in the form of the sound -possibly hallucinatory- of the old
man’s heart still beating under the floorboard.
Though Poe’s writing is two centuries old , he remains for many critics one of
the masters of the horror genre, and “a genius when it comes to compressing
action , characterization , and maximum thrills in just few pages.
CHARACTERS
The “I”
The narrator, never named in the story , tells the story in such a way as to
reveal gradually his own character traits We learn that he suffers from
insomnia . Even as the story begins he seems paranoid and mentally ill . He
seems to be isolated in the world. The pleading question at the beginning of
the story conveyed with such placid honesty :”but why will you say that I am
mad?” suggests the narrator’s blind faith in himself and his acute condition .
Moving on , after asking the readers to consider that he was in fact sane and
not mentally ill person , Poe immediately demonstrates that he is a malicious
person who derives pleasure from planning a gruesome murder and
psychologically harassing another human being . This can be be discerned
through the narrator’s own words : “oh, you would have laughed to see how
cunningly I thrust it in !”. . As readers learn more about the narrator , they feel
suspense .He begins his explanation of the murder with the statement “ It is
impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once I conceived , it
haunted me day and night”.
The basis for most prejudices is an idea , a thought , or an inclination ,
conscious or unconscious: “object there was none . Passion there was none “ is
how the describes this initial thought . The narrator’s hatred grew “ by degreesvery gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid
myself to the eye forever”.
The narrator hides his prejudice behind a face of caring :”I was never kinder to
the old man than during the whole week before I killed him”. Another aspect of
prejudice represented in the story is when the narrator referred to the old man
not as a human being , but as the “Evil Eye”. By dehumanizing the old man , the
narrator is making the murder to be not of a human but of a thing or an animal
.The fact that the old man is reduced to nothing but a thing , the murder is
justified in the narrator’s sight.
By providing such psychological insight sand explanations into the mind of the
narrator what Poe does is that he endeavours to explore and comprehend the
minds of the murderers and to fathom what provokes them to commit such
fiendish harm onto another human being. Thereby , through the character of
this fictitious narrator we as readers we can assert that Poe presents his own
hypothesis on the matter : exhibiting the fact that murderers such as the
narrator himself takes pleasure and pride in inducing psychological fear into
the mind of another human .Furthermore, they are very methodical ,
meticulous and extremely careful about their killings .Likewise , they are just as
meticulous with corrupting the scene of the crime and flushing away any
evidence which would link the murder to them -such as the manner in which
the narrator mutilates the old man’s body and buries it into the ground and
then washes away the blood stains with such impeccability that no one would
ever be capable of discovering what had actually occurred between him and
the old man.
Another characteristic which helps the readers to analyse the character of the
narrator is his understanding of his mental condition as ‘ over-acuteness of the
sense’. This portrays to the readers the reasons leading to the narrator’s
murder of the old man and what provoked him to later kill him.
Paranoid: It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain ; but once
conceived , it haunted me day and night “. The narrator is a very disturbed
character to kill a defenceless old man because he felt threatened by the old
man’s eye . The narrator seems abnormal and , to many readers , frightening
because he seems to enjoy his stalking behaviour spying on the old man for
seven nights prior to the murder .
Stalker : “ And every night , about midnight , I turned the latch of his door and
opened it – oh , so gently!”. The process through which he stalks the eye seems
so very strange and creepy . The narrator seems to take a lot of pleasure in it .
It seems very perverse : “ I could scarcely contain my feeling of triumph, to
think that there I was , opening the door , little by little , and he not even to
dream of my secret deeds and thoughts
Two – faced : “ And every morning , when the day broke, I went boldly into the
chamber , and spoke up my fury , as the beating of a drum stimulates the
soldier into courage . But even yet I refrained “
The narrator ends up being a cold-hearted !!!murderer . The narrator is quite
arrogant and devious , but eventually his cruel insanity overtakes his intentions
to appear calm to the police
Cruel , sadist : I cut off the head and the arms and the legs “
Clever :” I then replaced the boards so cleverly , so cunningly , that no human
eye -not even his – could have detected any thing wrong “.
Liar: “ The shriek , I said , was my own in a dream . The old man , I mentioned ,
was absent in the country”
The old man
The old man , whose eye is blue and hard to look at , is the neighbour of the
unnamed narrator . He played a big role in this short story even though he was
murdered at the end of the story .
The old man is even more mysterious than the narrator – partly because we
only see him through the lens of the narrator. Who has never harmed the
narrator but who, much like the old man, looks at him with his “ vulture eye”.
The reader may also consider element of symbolism which Poe uses here : the
old man symbolising the persona of the society who has never harmed the
narrator but who, much like the old man, looks at him with his vulture eye
which symbolizes the ugly, disdained , and eerie looks which people normally
give those whom they think abnormal, mentally ill, or psychologically broken .
The narrator then strives to dismantle those “ eyes“ which constantly judges
him and wants to get rid of them because for him they are harming him - and
making him feel terribly uncomfortable. So, by killing the old man he was
trying in fact to restore this comfort.
PLOT
Plot is the sequence of related events in a story . There are five parts:
Exposition:
• Introduction to the setting (time and place)
• Introduction to the main characters.
• Introduction to the problem / conflict
The narrator wants to show that he is not insane and provides a story as a
proof. He is angry and scared of the old man’s eye and the initial situation is his
decision to kill the old man so that the man’s eye will stop looking at the
narrator.
Rising action:
Each night the narrator spies on the old man as he sleeps for a week, ready to
do his dirty deed .But , the sleeping man won’t open his eyes. until one night he
wakes up
Climax: The narrator murders the old man with his own bed and then cuts up
the body and hides it under the bedroom floor.
Falling Action: The police knock on the door and question the narrator because
a neighbour reported they heard a shriek . The narrator remains calm and
collected and give them a tour in the house, and then asks them to hang out
with him in the man’s bedroom. But he starts to hear the noise of a throbbing
heart which gets louder and louder.
Resolution/ denouement: The narrator can’t bear it any longer .He confesses
his crime to the police because he cannot deal with the guilt and the sound of
his beating heart.
Setting
Setting is the “where and when” of a story ; It is the time and place during
which the story takes place .
The story the narrator tells takes place inside a house about which few details
are directly given . As to the interior of the house , we only hear about the old
man’s bedroom, which is the place where the horror of the nightly spying and
the subsequent killing took place . The rampant darkness of the place helps in
building the suspense and in creating the congenial atmosphere for the horror.
As many of the buildings or even individual rooms may symbolize the interiors
of human heads “ ( Fisher 84: 2002) the dark room symbolizes also the creepy
mind of the narrator which become the setting of his much thought about plan
and its execution.