The Tell-Tale Heart is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, first published in 1843. The story is told by a man whose name the reader is not advised. The story was published in James Russell Lowell’s magazine, The Pioneer. The minimalism of the narration’s flow in The Tell-Tale Heart of Edgar Allen Poe is revealed in its briefness and mysteriousness.
The author avoids everything superfluous, leaving only the essentials to tell the message of his story. From the beginning of the short story, every word serves one purpose: to move the story forward intensely. The narrative begins when events are already in full swing. The murderer for whom the story is being told is telling his story to an interlocutor – an investigator, a judge, a cellmate or guard in prison, a journalist, a roommate, or a psychiatrist in a hospital. It is impossible to establish this; the very first word in the story, the exclamation “True!”, shows that the narrator admits guilt (Edgar Allan Poe 3). At the same time, from the first lines, the author grabs his attention as the narrator begins to frantically justify himself and look for circumstances that, in his view, mitigate his guilt. The murderer is trying to figure out the reasons for what happened on his own, so he tries to tell everything in the smallest detail. As a result, his story becomes a dissection of the horror that happened to him.
The novel is not driven by the killer’s insistence on his innocence, as one might expect, which is typical of crime stories, but by the assurance that he is “sane,” that he is not insane. The murderer himself does not notice that, without denying his guilt, he is admitting it. This, in turn, raises doubts about his adequacy because he is trying to prove something that is not essential to him at the moment, clearly not guided in his assessment of what he has done and not setting the right priorities. “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Edgar Allan Poe 10).In the very denial of his insanity, he argues for his actions’ thoroughness and accuracy, trying to find a rational explanation for his irrational behavior.
The narrator twice declares that he suffers from a peculiar disease in which perception is heightened. It is impossible to determine how much credence can be given to these statements by the narrator. Perhaps the loud pounding of the heart is a figment of his imagination, or perhaps he suffers from such an exotic disease. If so, one can find a rational explanation for the sounds he heard: perhaps they were made by the beetle Xestobium rufovillosum. The narrator may have heard them for the first time before the murder when there was “an anxious silence in the old man’s room” (Edgar Allan Poe 11). According to the belief, to hear these beetles is to die soon. Beetles of one subspecies bang their heads against wooden surfaces during the mating ritual; others make ticking sounds. Otherwise, they were only hallucinations of the murderer, a play on his imagination that ruined him.
The relationship between the old man and his murderer is not defined in the story, nor are their names, social status, occupation, or place of residence. This ambiguity creates an ironic contrast to the detail of the story. The narrator may be the old man’s servant or, as is more often assumed, his son. In this case, the vulture eye symbolizes paternal supervision and perhaps the imposition of his principles. The vulture is a bird, on the one hand, predatory and, on the other hand, carrion-eating, associated with death and decay. The desire to close the “eye of the vulture” symbolizes the release of the will and conscience of the killer and liberation from the shackles of the dark, otherworldly power of the old man (Edgar Allan Poe 12). The eye may also mean some mystery that binds the two heroes. It is noteworthy that for seven nights in a row, the narrator did not dare to kill the old man when his eye was closed. It was only when he saw the eye open, like an unlocked door to the old man’s soul or secrets, that the murder took place.
Edgar Poe’s original text lacks not only the names of the characters and indications of the relationship between them but also, thanks to the peculiar grammar of the English language, indications of the sex of the perpetrator. There is nothing in the story that implies that the protagonist is male; the author avoids describing the details of his clothing, his occupation, and other aspects. “It was open – wide, wide open – and I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (Edgar Allan Poe 9). This tradition is held in the English-speaking milieu as well, for example, in screen and radio productions of the short story, as well as by illustrators.
However, the relationship between the characters is not the main focus of this novella. The author focuses on creating a picture of the perfect crime when seemingly nothing can give away the murderer. The conflicting elements of the story are the narrator’s obsessive anger through the eyes of the old man, as presented earlier in the description of the old man. He also had problems with his authentic interpretations of what was going on around him, referring to the groans of the sleeping old man. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and nigh” (Edgar Allan Poe 12). This pretense of being in control and his psychological stability is overshadowed by other lines supporting his insanity. In fact, the complex factor of the old man’s nocturnal moans and the narrator’s mad desire to look into the old man’s room already presents a conflict of interest. Either way, it leads to the climax of his villainy: killing the old man.
Thus, the components of the story show that there was a deliberate use of ambiguity to dispel the shroud of doubt among readers. This allows the story to become obscure, leaving the reader on the edge of his seat searching for hard evidence to understand what The Tell-Tale Heart really means or suggests. With numerous elements, the story introduces the theme of madness. The narrator’s repeated lines clarify his emotion of nervousness rather than turmoil; his seeming reverence for the old man, but still plotting and acting to take his life; his calm attitude toward the police, but ultimately treating them as villains. All of this makes up grandiose images of mystery and illusion leading to mysteriousness. Whether the story refers to a single character trapped in a schizophrenic dilemma or to two people living together in horrific conditions is a question that remains open and constitutes an important element of gothic literature.
Work Cited
Edgar Allan Poe. The Tell-Tale Heart. 1843. Edina, Minn., Magic Wagon, 2010.