The Tell-Tale Heart: An
In-Depth Analysis
Roland Raymond A. Roldan LIT231 Fr Gonzalez Ateneo de Naga University
Tell-Tale Heart: An
In-Depth Analysis
I.
Summary
The short story
“Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe opens with the statement of the narrator’s
intention of proving that he is not mad.
He describes the
eventual murder: how for seven nights, while the old man was asleep, he shines
a thin ray of light onto the man’s evil eye. Each time the eye is closed,
thwarting his plan. On the eighth night,
his hand slips and makes a noise, waking the old man. Finding the eye open, he
could hear the man’s heart beating wildly, perhaps from terror. He smothers the
old man with a pillow. He then dismembers him and put his remains under the
floorboards.
The police later
arrive, claiming reports that neighbors heard a scream. The killer insists that
it is only him, crying out from his sleep. By then he has grown quite arrogant
of his act—he feels that he won’t get caught. He set up chairs for the police
to sit on, right on top of the floorboards where the pieces of the old man are
buried.
After a time, the
narrator grows uncomfortable and feels a ringing in his ears, growing louder
and louder, and by then he is convinced that the heartbeats are coming from
under the floorboards. The thumping grows louder, and the narrator grows more
terrified. He becomes convinced that the officers could also hear the beating,
and that they also know what he has done. He then breaks down and confesses,
telling the officers to tear up the floorboards so they can find the old man’s
remains.
II.
Formal Analysis
“The
Tell-Tale Heart,” written by Edgar Allan Poe, was published in 1843. This short
but highly effective horror story is told from the first person point of view,
wherein the narrator tries to convince the reader of his/her sanity in spite of
the rather odd, insane way he/she describes his thoughts and actions. The
narrative voice used in this case is autodiegetic, with the narrator being the
protagonist him/herself. The narration, one can say, is a confession of sorts
as the narrator, trying to prove his/her sanity tells the tale. However,
instead of proving that he/she is not mad, he/she exhibits the exact opposite
and admits to killing an “old man,” cutting his corpse and hiding the pieces
under the floor boards.
One
can say that the narrator fulfills the communication function as he/she
addresses the audience, maintaining contact with the reader all through out.
One can see that this function clearly in the beginning lines:
“True!—nervous—very,
very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?
The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all
was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the
earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?”
Using
the pronoun “you,” the narrator directly questions the reader why he has been
accused of having lost his/her mind. This line of questioning seems to hint a
previous relation with the reader. It is as if he is confirming and objecting
to a previous statement in a previous part of the story.
Another
function of the narrator is the testimonial function. The narrator, being the
protagonist, expresses his/her direct and affective relation to the events. He
is able to affirm the truth of his own story and narrates it with precision and
certainty to a high degree. However, one can say that the detailed yet insanely
myopic narration may lead the reader to question the “facts” the narrator
tells, such as the victim having an “Evil Eye.” For this reason, the story’s
narrator shows unreliability especially when the narrator’s telling of the
facts from his own imaginings are somewhat blurred. It may be difficult for the
reader to differentiate actual events and descriptions from the narrator’s own
hallucination, pseudo-hallucination, and paranoia.
The characters are all flat except for the narrator who is round and
whose insanity brings a certain unpredictability to his characterization.
His/her characterization is not directly defined but indirectly presented
through his speech, actions, and environment. At the beginning, one cannot say
for certain if the narrator is a man or a woman. However, if one looks at the
following lines, a clue on the narrator’s gender could be deduced:
“Now
this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have
seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with
what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work.”
This may lead one to assume to some degree that the narrator may be
male, as he contrasts himself to “madmen” who know nothing, contrary to him,
who is wise and therefore sane. For this reason, the narrator will be referred
to using a masculine pronoun for the remainder of this paper.
Also indirectly presented in the above lines is the narrator’s view
of himself as being an expert in dissimulation, a skill of which he is proud. One
can say that the protagonist uses his skills of deception by not showing his
internal state outwardly as seen in the line: “I was never kinder to the old
man than during the whole week before I killed him.” The value he gives to his
ability to deceive is also seen in the beginning lines as he admits nervousness
yet presents his ability to act calm despite his nervousness as proof of his
sanity:
“True!
--nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you
say that I am mad... How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily
--how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”
One can see how he expects his sanity to be proven by his
dissimulated telling of his whole story. Thus, by indirect presentation of
characterization, the narrator is conveyed, through his own words, as a person
who is deceitful, with skewed values and having a distorted sense of reality.
His narration as he describes his
story reveals his obsession with details that catch his fancy for whatever
reason. His obsession with details to the point of ignoring other aspects of
his surroundings is seen in the lack of the descriptions of the house, bed room
and the old man. Although, he describes objects of fixation such as the “Evil
Eye” in great detail as seen in the lines:
“He had the eye
of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” and “I saw it with perfect
distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very
marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or
person.”
One can also
see this obsessed attention to detail in his actions:
“I resolved to
open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you
cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a simple dim ray,
like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the
vulture eye.”
In these lines, one can say that the narrator is indirectly
presented as having an obsessive-compulsive nature as seen in his repeated and
timed criminal intentions and acts; and this may very well be the cause of his
insanity and subsequently his murderous crime. One can also say that this
obsessive-compulsive behavior, accompanied by paranoia of the “Evil Eye’s”
power against him, may not be overt at all. This may be due to his skillful
concealing ways, something he valued highly,
in order to appear normal to the old man and three police officers.
One can also see that the narrator is full of contradiction. He says
he loves the “old man” and presents no reason to kill him but does so just to
address his fixation on the “Evil Eye.” In this instance, one can say that the
narrator’s extreme fixations control all of his faculties: thoughts, emotions,
and actions; and acting upon these fixations gives him happiness and
satisfaction as seen in the lines:
“I could scarcely
contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door,
little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I
fairly chuckled at the idea,” and “There was nothing to wash out --no stain of
any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had
caught all --ha! ha!”
Here, he is
shown as possessing feelings of triumph and fun while committing his crime.
Thus, he is indirectly presented as insane by his own thoughts, words, and
actions.
The old man and the police
all maintain their characterizations due to the fact that there was simply not
enough narrative time given for their specific characterizations to be
developed. The “old man” remains a mystery and one cannot be certain of who he
is and his relationship with the narrator. He can be a father, brother,
grandfather, master or even a stranger who took the narrator in for eight days.
One can only infer that the old man may be rich for he was indirectly presented
as such in the lines: “For his gold I had no desire,” and “I showed them his
treasures, secure, undisturbed.” He was also indirectly presented as being
afraid of robbers through the descriptions of his surroundings: “His room was
as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close
fastened, through fear of robbers.)” The police, on the other hand, were
indirectly presented by their external appearance in the following lines:
“There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as
officers of the police.” However, one cannot be certain as to the policemen’s
knowledge of the crime and killer before the actual confession. It is only
through the narrator’s eyes that one can view how the police men reacted during
their talk with him. In this case, he says with regard to the policemen, “I
could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer,” a sentence that one may find unreliable. This
may only be seen as the killer’s distorted interpretation of the police
officers’ facial expressions and may not be factual.
It
is quite difficult to point out the exact time the subsequent narration is
done. The only thing one can be sure of is that everything in the story already
happened, whether in fact or inside the mind of an insane man. It is also
unknown how long ago the events in the story happened before its narration
commenced.
The
narrative perspective or focalization of the story is internal as one can see
the events only through the eyes of one character—the narrator, who is also the
protagonist. This includes the mental map of the narrator as well as his
thoughts, opinions, and emotions in relation to the events and other characters
in the story. One can only see the other characters through the perspective of
the protagonist, such as the time during the eighth night when the narrator
surmises the old man’s state of emotion, but only as a reflection of his:
I knew what the old man felt, and pitied
him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever
since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been
ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but
could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in
the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is
merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying
to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain.”
Here, the feelings of the old man can
only be viewed through the narrator who, one can argue, is only guessing and
imagining the old man’s thoughts and emotion at that time. Unless the narrator
can read minds, a skill not presented in the text, there is no way for one to
ascertain the validity of the narrator’s assumptions regarding the old man.
Additionally, the old man did not say anything, besides a groan, during this
time to confirm the narrator’s suppositions. Thus, one is left with an
unreliable description of the old man only through the internally focalized
perspective of narrator who is the killer.
The
main conflict in the story is the protagonist against himself as he struggles
to conceal his crime from police. The climax of his struggle happens when he
succumbs to the sound of what he deems to be heartbeats. Believing the sounds
to be loud enough to be heard by the police, he confesses his crime.
“Almighty
God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a
mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better
than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear
those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now
--again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
"Villains!"
I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks!
here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
The narrative speed also varies. The narration begins with a
monologue of the main character stating his emotional state and anticipating
what he is about to do which is to tell his story. Here in this bit of
introduction, the narrative time is equal to the story’s time. The narrator
then states how his idea to kill began, and then summarizes the events of the
past week heading up to his murderous act. One can see the narrative speed
accelerating during the summary as events of seven days, being repetitive, was
made to fit in one paragraph.
When events of the eighth day are narrated, the narrative speed
slows down to being slower or the same speed as the story. One can see this in
the detailed descriptions of the narrator’s actions during the said nigh:
“I had my head in,
and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin
fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's
there?" I kept quite still and said nothing.”
At other
moments, a brief summary where the narrative speed picks up can also be seen:
“For a whole hour I
did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was
still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after
night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.”
Anachrony is also
seen in the story. One can say that the beginning, or the introductory part, is
the actual ending of the story as it may have started right after the narrator
confessed to the three policemen. If this is the case, one can say that the
story has an analepsis of a sort that doesn’t interrupt the main story albeit
begins it.
III.
Interpretation
The
theme of the story may be found in the objects of the narrator’s obsession
which are the “Evil Eye” or the “vulture eye” and the “tell-tale heart” of the
old man. In the story, one can say that the eye described as “a dull blue, with
a hideous veil over it,” may just be a case of Waardenburg syndrome, a rare
genetic disorder with symptoms that include one or two eyes becoming pale blue,
or heterochromia brought about by different levels of melanin in each eye with
the blue eye having less melanin than the brown eye, or the early onset of
glaucoma. However, if one looks at the eye and search for its meaning, one can
say that the single eye may symbolize three things: 1) the myopic view of the
protagonist of his reality, 2) the reader’s view of the story which is
extremely focalized to the narrator’s character, and 3) the homophone pronoun
“I” where the narrator is only referring to himself as the evil one.
First,
one can see the restricted and skewed view of the narrator in his descriptions
of people and his surroundings. As mentioned before, his characterization is
presented as someone obsessed with details but lacking a more general view of
the world. This is evidenced by the detailed descriptions of objects of
fixation, such as the “vulture eye,” “a sound as a watch makes when enveloped
in cotton” and the “beating of his hideous heart." Descriptions of a more
general landscape are found missing such as size, color and design of the interior
of the old house as well as people’s appearance, faces, clothes and demeanor.
This means that the view of the narrator is like that of a single eye zooming
in only at certain objects and ignoring the rest of the view.
This
is also evident when one analyzes the relationship between the narrator and the
old man with the one filmy, pale blue, “vulture-like” eye, or questions what
actually transpired that lead him to murder such man. The former claims in the
narrative that, other than his complete revulsion for the eye, he harbors no
hate for the old man. It is solely because of the narrator’s fixation to the
old man’s eye that he commits the heinous deed. One can say that the narrator
consciously zooms in on this “Evil Eye” and ceases viewing the old man as a
person he loves but only as an “Eye” that he hates.
Second,
the “eye” symbolizes the restricted view afforded to the reader via the
auto-diegetic narrator. One is sucked into the distorted world of the narrator
and views nothing else. Facts and hallucinations are mixed up in sporadic
fashion, leading one to feel confused: empathizing with the protagonist but at
the same time fearing him. This confusion within the reader effectively gives
way to creepy feelings of being watched and of being unsafe as the horror of
the murderous affair takes hold.
Third,
through textual evidence, one can explain how the “eye” becomes “I” in the
insane subconscious mind of the narrator. Initially, one can argue that the
protagonist-narrator’s view of others is an attempt at omniscience as seen in
his seeming belief that he can read the minds of others, but the reality is
that his perspective is solely based on his own experience, opinions, thoughts
and emotions which he simply reflects on others. This pseudo-omniscient narrator
shows this in two occasions, one when he assumes to know the mind of the old
man and the other when he thinks that
the police officers are mocking him. First occasion is on the eighth night when
he assumes he can read the old man’s mind as seen in the lines:
“I say I
knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him… He had been trying
to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself
--"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney --it is only a mouse crossing
the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single
chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these
suppositions: but he had found all in vain.”
Here, one can see how he
creates an inner monologue for the old man and views this as an accurate depiction.
Upon closer inspection, one can say that these are actually his own words
whenever he is faced with his own night terrors—things that may not have been
experienced by the old man. Moreover, the old man’s words created in the
narrator’s mind are not grounded on any words spoken aloud by the old man but
only based on the narrator’s own imagination. By analogy, one can surmise that
the “Evil Eye” of the old man may be similar in nature to the monologue, that
is, only a creation inside the narrator’s mind and in actuality belonging to
himself.
However,
for reasons unknown, the narrator cannot accept this “Evil Eye” as part of
himself, and so he disassociates himself from his own possession of the “Evil
Eye.” Instead, he projects the “ Evil Eye” as the old man’s blue eye. Thus, one
can say that the “Evil Eye” possessed by the old man is in actuality possessed
by the narrator. In this case, the “eye” becomes a metaphor for “I.” These
homophones become interchangeable in the insane mind, and one can conclude that
on a subconscious level, the narrator knows that the “Evil I” is actually
himself and nobody else.
This
mental disorder is known in Psychology as Dissociative Identity Disorder
characterized by the following symptoms that are present in the narrator: a) his sense
of being detached from himself and his emotions, as exhibited by the
protagonist’s dissimulated behavior, b) his distorted and unreal perception of
things and people, as illustrated in his belief of the old man’s “Evil Eye,” c)
his blurred sense of identity as shown by his unawareness of his own insanity,
and at the same time, his self-image of being healthy and wise.
Additionally,
the “vulture eye” seems to have a certain power over the narrator because it made his blood run
cold and “chilled the very marrow in [his] bones.” He also views it as somewhat
all-seeing when he says: “I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly,
that no human eye --not even his [old man’s evil eye] --could have detected any thing wrong.” For
these reasons, the narrator decides to end the old man so that “His eye would
trouble me [him] no more.”
Another essential object of
obsession is the “tell-tale heart” which is also the title of the story. One
can say that this heart and the “tales it tells”—the sounds coming out of it—may
actually be three things: 1) an auditory
hallucination or pseudo-hallucination brought about by mental and physical
illnesses possibly suffered by the narrator, 2) the old man’s heart as
seemingly heard by the narrator, and 3)
the narrator’s own heart as he tells his tale of murder.
First, one can see that the sounds
coming from the heart, a physical organ, cannot be as loud as the narrator
describes in some instances in the story:
“Meantime the hellish
tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and
louder every instant…It grew louder, I say, louder every moment… And now at the
dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange
a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror…But the beating grew
louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me
--the sound would be heard by a neighbour!”
Thus,
one can conclude that it is not an actual heart he is hearing but an auditory
hallucination. This may be brought about by another mental illness called
Schizophrenia in Psychology. It is characterized by symptoms present in the
narrator: a) auditory hallucinations as exhibited by the narrator’s hearing of
impossibly loud heartbeats, b) delusions of grandeur indicated by the
narrator’s belief that he is endowed with the special powers and
characteristics such as extreme wisdom or the sensory gift of acute hearing:
“Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my
sagacity,” “Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the
heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell,” c) unawareness of his
illness as shown by the narrator stating that he is healthy and wise, and d)
catatonia or the ability to hold poses for long periods of time as done by the
narrator in keeping only his head in the doorway for an hour: “For a whole hour
I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down.”
Another possible cause for the heartbeats
the narrator hears can be Pulsatile Tinnitus, a condition where the person
experiences a thumping or whooshing sound in their ears with the same rhythm as
their heartbeat caused by underlying diseases involving a blood vessel problem,
a middle ear bone condition or muscle contractions. One can say that this may
be a condition suffered by the narrator as the heartbeats he hears often
coincide with his own heart beating louder and faster.
Second, the telltale heart can be
the old man’s heart just as the narrator believes. This is evident in only one
occasion which is during the actual instance of murder when it is possible for
the narrator, being near the victim, to truly hear the old man’s heart beating
loud and quick in fear, and subsequently ceasing to beat when the old man dies.
Third, the heart is the narrator’s
own. Just as he disassociates with his “Evil I,” so does he disassociate with
his own heart in order to accomplish his murderous intention. One can also
conclude that he is hearing his own heartbeat while he is talking to the police
officers right before he confesses his crime and not the “hideous heart” of the
corpse of the old man.
In order to analyze what the
different hearts in the story mean, one can view them from the perspectives of
the narrator and the reader. From the perspective of the narrator, the telltale
heart is the heart of the dead old man who beats loudly to tell the police
officers of his foul deed. From the reader’s point of view, one can say that
the telltale heart is the narrator’s own and represents his subconscious guilt
for killing the beloved old man, and from this heart he confesses his secret
misdeed.
Indeed,
the theme of the story can be found with how the eye relates to the heart. There
are many stories and famous lines that compare and contrast the heart and the
eyes, and so it may be seen by many as cliché. However, in this creepy and
horrific tale of murder told firsthand by a deranged narrator, this theme is
embedded so deeply that the story, expertly told by Edgar Allan Poe, in a
concise yet dense narrative style, is anything but cliché. The evil of the
“vulture eye,” an eye that anticipates death with eagerness and greed just like
a vulture, is counterbalanced with the telltale heart’s confession. One can say
that the veiled covert eye contrasts remarkably well with the loud tell-tale
heart. Traditionally the eye represents truth as seen in famous lines such as
“to see is to believe,” while the heart represents,
quite obviously, love. However, in the story, the eye is said to be evil,
dulled and veiled and thus represents the covering up of truth which is
deception. On the other hand, the heart may mean the love the narrator
continues to feel for the old man, and from this comes a subconscious
conscience, screaming louder and louder at him to tell everyone his tale of
murder and to pay for his crime.
In
conclusion, one can say that this short story is masterful in the way it uses cliché
objects such as the “eye” and the “heart” to concoct a disturbing tale of
paranoia and insanity that very gradually seeps into the mind of the reader. While
reading, one is compelled to look over one’s shoulder in paranoia and to fear
for one’s own sanity as feelings of understanding and sympathy toward the
killer emerge. Indeed, only the heart knows what the eye can see, and the heart
cannot help but tell its tale.
IV.
Sources
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Ware, P. L. (n.d.). Pseudo Auditory Hallucinations.
Dissociative disorders. (2017, November 17). Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dissociative-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20355215
Poe, E. (n.d.). The Tell-Tale Heart. Retrieved from https://www.poemuseum.org/the-tell-tale-heart.
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Poe, E. (n.d.). Poe's Short Stories. Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestories/section6/
Pulsatile Tinnitus - Thumping sound in ear - Heartbeat in my
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