According to Owlcation (2019), “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of the creations of Edgar Allan Poe, known as the man who pioneered detective and solve-a-crime stories. According to CCH English 20 Classroom (n.d.), the story is set sometime in the 19th century, as seen by the lack of electricity and dependence on gas lanterns. It is predominately developed in the bedchambers of the old man, most likely in some American town or city, where a murder and subsequent police investigation takes place. The mood is tense as the narrator reveals early on how he wishes to commit murder, and the continual references to the narrator’s own sanity add to the overall intensity because the setting seems so commonplace, and the characters so ordinary on the surface, Poe is effectively able to add to the horror of the situation. The said short story is about an anonymous narrator who seems to prove that he is sane yet exhibits a rather contrasting behavior for having confessed the murder of an old man with an ‘evil vulture blue eye.’ The story is told from the first person point of view, through the eyes of the madman. His attempts to convince the reader he is sane–that he just suffers from acute senses– fails as the reader is forced to understand his rational for killing the man. This perspective helps develop the inherent ironies in the story, as the reader understands the truth much differently from the madman.
` A narrator begins the story by explaining that he's sane. The protagonist of the "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a classic example of Poe's unreliable narrator, a man who cannot be trusted to tell the objective truth of what is occurring. He tells us that his precision in killing him means that he could not possibly be insane. For 7 nights, the narrator opens the man's door - a process which takes him a whole hour. However, the old man's eye is always closed, making it impossible to do the deed. On the 8th night, the old man wakes up and the narrator's lantern flashes in the man's vulture eye. The old man screams. He jumps onto the old man and gives him a heart attack. He smothers him in the bed and chops his body up into little pieces, then hiding it under the floorboards. A neighbor phones the police and 3 officers come to check out the disturbance. Pleasant and courteous, the narrator is confident that they'll find no trace of murder. But soon he hears the old man's thumping heart coming from under the floor (not realizing it could have been his own nervous heart thumping). He feels that the officers must hear the sound too, so then the man confesses to killing him and tells them to tear up the floorboards in order to reveal the body (Senni 2012). According to Owlcation (2019), the climax is shown when the narrator killed the old man as he stated in the lines:
“For an hour I did not move a muscle. I could feel the earth turn... The eye... Hear the spiders spinning. In the house, the grinding grumble of decay. And then, something else. Dull and muffled, and yet... Of course! It was the beating of the old man's heart. He knew! So strong for such an old man. Louder then, and still louder, for all the world to hear, I know! I had to stop it! [Narrator screams as he strangles the old man] Then it was over. The heart was still. The eye was dead. I was free!”.
Again, this more leads to the theme of insanity simply due to the disparity of love and goodness for the old man versus his hatred for his moans and evil eye. Following this deed, the narrator had no choice but to redeem himself from utter darkness; this leads us to the resolution of the case.
The resolution is presented with the words of the narrator saying:
“Then I heard it. It might have been an ant, a clock. But no. Louder, and still louder. They must hear it, and yet they sit and talk and talk. Of course, they must! They know, they do! They're torturing me, watching me, letting it beat so that I... That I... Stop it! Stop it, you devils! Yes, yes, I did it! It's there, under the floor! Oh, stop it! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”. Obviously, there is something psychologically very wrong with the narrator for stating such lines.
According to the Enotes (n.d.) the particular standpoint from which the "Tell-Tale Heart" is told provides the reader with insight into the major character's motivation in carrying out the murder and in telling us about it. Significantly, in the first sentence the narrator says that he "had been and am" nervous. This means that he was insane at the time the events that he describes took place and in the "present," the time of the story's narration. No object or passion stood behind the chief character's heinous deed. He allows that he even "loved" the old man. Later the narrator speaks of the "mortal "terror" that has "many a night, just at midnight...it has welled up from my own bosom." The reason for the crime lies exclusively in the narrator's disturbed mind. The narrative persona of "The Tell-Tale Heart" seems to have a hidden agenda in conveying his story to the reader. His purpose in laying open the details of his crime is to convince the reader of his sanity. When he points the reader's attention toward "how calmly I can tell you the whole story," his aim is to demonstrate a mental soundness that he seems to believe must present within him since he has been able to enact a complicated murder with a diligent eye for detail. This hidden agenda comes across unmistakably when the narrator states: "If you think me mad, you will no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body." The fact that an account of a gruesome dismemberment follows undercuts the narrator's aim of convincing us that he is sane. In a sense, the narration of the tale is a part of the crime itself.
The irony in the story is in the second sentence of the first paragraph; the narrator says "The disease had sharpened my senses— not destroyed, not dulled them." In my opinion this is ironic, because he believed that his insanity was an asset to his situation, when really it brought about his downfall. Had he not been so self-assured that his scheme would be flawless because of his "heightened senses", he invariably would not have ended up in turmoil. This brings about the next point; it was ironic that after all of his careful planning, he ended up admitting to the police that he had killed the man. The irony carried on throughout this story is that the reader understands the narrator’s actions to be completely mad, but the narrator deems himself sane. That he would understand murder to be rational is solid evidence of insanity, but to murder because of the appearance of a man’s eye reinforces the reader’s understanding of how psychopathic the man really is.
A theme of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is that human nature is a delicate balance of light and dark, or good and evil. Most of the time, this precarious proportion was maintained. However, when there is a shift, for whatever reason, the dark or perverse side emerges. How and why this dark side arises differs from person to person. What may push one individual over the edge will only cause another to raise an eyebrow? For the conclusion, the real essence of the story is all about the facility of the elements to create mystery; mystery which makes not only marketing and promotion achieve their respective objectives but also instilling a name and brand recall that is signature of Edgar Allan Poe.
REFERENCES
CCH English 20 Classroom (n.d.). SHORT STORY ANALYSIS, The Tell Tale Heart. Retrieved from: https://cche20.wordpress.com/short-story-unit/short-story-analysis/
Enotes, (n.d.).The First-Person Narrative Viewpoint in the “Tell-Tale Heart”. Retrieved from: https://www.enotes.com/topics/tell-tale-heart/critical-essays/essays-criticism
Owlcation, (2019). Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart": A Literary Analysis. Retrieved from: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Edgar-Allan-Poes-the-Tell-Tale-Heart-A-Literary-Analysis
Sennin, (2012). Formalist Analysis SHORT STORY ANALYSIS TITLE: The Tell Tale Heart.Retrived from: http://arulsmart-englisheducation.blogspot.com/2012/01/formalist-analysis-short-story-analysis.html
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