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A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is a Gothic novel in miniature. All of the elements of the Gothic novel are here: the subterranean secret, the Gothic space (scaled down from a full-blown castle to a single room), the gruesome crime – even the hovering between the supernatural and the psychological.

In just five pages, it’s as if Edgar Allan Poe has scaled down the eighteenth-century Gothic novel into a story of just a few thousand words. But what makes this story so unsettling?

Closer analysis reveals that ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ centres on that most troubling of things: the motiveless murder.

First, a brief summary of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. An unnamed narrator confesses that he has murdered an old man, apparently because of the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ which drove the narrator to kill him. He then describes how he crept into the old man’s bedroom while he slept and stabbed him, dragging the corpse away and dismembering it, so as to conceal his crime.

He goes to some lengths to cover up all trace of the murder – he even caught his victim’s blood in a tub, so that none was spilt anywhere – and then he takes up three of the floorboards of the chamber, and conceals his victim’s body underneath. But no sooner has he concealed the body than there’s a knock at the door: it’s the police, having been called out by a neighbour who heard a shriek during the night.

The narrator lets the police officers in to search the premises, and tells them a lie about the old man being away in the country. He keeps his calm while showing them around, until they go and sit down in the room below which the victim’s body is concealed.

The narrator and the police officers talk, but gradually the narrator begins to hear a ringing in his ears, a noise that becomes louder and more insistent. He believes that it is the beating of the dead man’s heart, taunting him from beyond the grave. Eventually, he can’t stand it any more, and tells the police to tear up the floorboards, the sound of the old man’s beating heart driving him to confess his crime.

The narrator of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ is clearly unstable, as the end of the story reveals, but his mental state is questionable right from the start, as the jerky syntax of his narrative suggests:

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? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

The multiple dashes, the unusual syntactical arrangement, the exclamation and question marks: all suggest someone who is, at the very least, excitable. His repeated protestations that he is sane and merely subject to ‘over acuteness of the senses’ don’t fully convince: there is too much in his manner (to say nothing of his baseless murder of the old man) to suggest otherwise.

A motiveless crime?

And indeed, what makes ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ especially chilling – and here we might draw a parallel with another of Poe’s best-known tales, ‘The Black Cat’ – is that the killer freely confesses that his murder of the old man was a motiveless crime:

I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture – a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –  very gradually – I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Murder is never justified, but it is sometimes understandable when a person has been driven to extremes and isn’t thinking clearly. But Poe’s narrator didn’t even kill the old man for something as cynical as financial gain. Even his proffered motive – the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ – is weak. He has to convince himself that that was why he did it, after the fact : ‘I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!’ (our emphasis).

One can imagine a police detective doing a double-take in the interview room. ‘You think it was his eye?’ This alone makes it clear that we are dealing with an unhinged mind, somebody who, to borrow from Bob Dylan, ‘killed for no reason’. Motiveless murderers are often the most unsettling.

Consider the ‘motiveless malignity’ of Iago , perhaps Shakespeare’s finest villain, who offers a number of potential motives for wanting to destroy the lives of Othello and Desdemona, and in doing so reveals that he very probably doesn’t have a real motive – other than wishing to cause trouble for the hell of it.

Poe and  Macbeth

But Othello is not Poe’s main Shakespearean intertext for ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. Closer analysis of the story reveals that an important precursor-text to ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, and probable influence on Poe, is William Shakespeare’s Macbeth .

Both texts centre on the murder of an ‘old man’; in both cases, the murderer is driven to feel guilt over his crime by being ‘haunted’ by his victim from beyond the grave (Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth , the old man’s beating heart in Poe’s story); both Macbeth and Poe’s narrator show signs of being at least a little mentally unstable; in both texts, the murder of the victim is followed by a knocking at the door.

But what makes Poe’s tale especially effective is the way he employs doubling to suggest that it is perfectly natural that the narrator should be paranoid about the sound coming from the floorboards. For before he had murdered the old man, the narrator had imagined his victim ‘trying to comfort himself’ when he heard a noise outside his bedroom:

All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim.

But of course this is really the narrator projecting his own unease around sounds; and it thus foreshadows his later paranoia over the supposed sound coming from under the floorboards – the sound that will drive him to confess to his crime.

But along with the ‘motiveless’ nature of the narrator’s crime, the other aspect of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ which makes it such a powerful analysis of the nature of crime and guilt is the slight ambiguity hovering over that sound which taunts the narrator at the end of the story.

An ambiguous tale

It seems most likely that the sound exists only in his head, since the policemen are apparently oblivious to it as they continue to chat away calmly to the narrator. (This is the one real weak point in Poe’s story: once they’ve searched the premises they appear to hang around to make small talk with the narrator. Haven’t they got more important things to do? Unless the narrator isn’t as calm at this point as he believes, and they suspect foul play and are trying to get him to reveal something incriminating…)

But we cannot be entirely sure. Even if the sound is supernatural in origin – and Poe was obviously a master of the supernatural, as several of his other best stories attest – it may be that his victim is making his ghostly heartbeat heard only to the narrator, burrowing away deep within his mind.

But on balance we’re tempted to think that Poe, along with Dickens around the same time (compare the studied analysis of the murderer Jonas Chuzzlewit’s mind as he flees the scene), is pioneering a new kind of approach to the ‘ghost story’ here – one in which the ‘ghost’ is no more than a hallucination or phantom of the character’s mind.

Although such ambiguity had been used to good effect by Shakespeare, in the ghost story it is Poe, in such stories as ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, who used this ambiguous plot detail to offer a deeper, more unsettling analysis of the nature of conscience.

6 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’”

Wonderful article! When I studied Poe in college my premise for one of my best papers centered on whether or not the murderer was sane or insane and even used “Methinks he protests too much” at the end. I believe I could’ve written several papers on this short story alone with several different topics. Again, wonderful article.

Thank you! Good Hamlet allusion too – one of the triumphs of Poe’s story, I think, is the instability of his narrator. Glad you enjoyed our analysis :)

Ahhhhh…and now here you have brought forth one of my most beloved tale tellers. Poe has influenced not only my own tales but my early life as well. Terrific analysis! The ambiguous nature of the conscience brought to fever pitch. :)

Thank you! It’s one of the real gems among Poe’s tales – and as you say, he’s a great tale-teller so there are quite a few to choose from :)

I’ve wondered if the heartbeat was the narrator’s own, since he was in a state of agitation and excitement while talking to the policemen. In any case, it’s a great story, and this is an interesting analysis.

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• The Tell Tale Heart

Background of the Story

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1843. It is about a murderer who tries to persuade his readers of his mental stability while telling the tale of the brutish act. He denies that he suffers from some mental illness and openly boasts of his cleverness and cunning behavior. He kills an old man though he loves him. He holds no grudges against him and murders him without any motive.

The old man’s “vulture-eye” makes the narrator angry and he decides to kill him. He attends to every minute detail in the process of murder; carefully kills him, disjoints every part of his body, and then buries the body parts underground in the room. He also receives the policemen with utmost comfort but, slowly and gradually, his anxiety increases. His guilty conscience constantly pricks him and reminds him of his brutal act. Eventually, he cannot bear the secret anymore and confesses his crime to the policemen.

The untrustworthy narrator does not have a solid reason to murder the old man (apart from his hatred for the old man’s eye). Furthermore, Poe has not given us detail about the narrator’s relationship with the old man. We do not know, as readers, whether the narrator is a male or a female. Poe only focuses on the events and situations which lead to the killing rather than focusing on individuals.

The story is one of the classics of Poe’s short stories and of its genre. The setting and diction used in the story make it a classic Poe story. The story is a proof of human being’s inherently evil nature. The unreliable narrator in the story brutally murders the old man irrationally and without any reason. The story also explores the paranoiac state of mind of the narrator.

The Tell Tale Heart Summary

At the start of the story, the narrator is answering an imaginary listener. He confesses that he has been ill but denies the fact that he is insane. Furthermore, he announces that the illness has given him more strength especially to his “sense of hearing”. He tells the imaginary listener that he is more vigilant now and is able to hear everything. Then he tells the listener to listen carefully as he narrates the story.

He confesses that there was no motive for what he did. He loved the old man who never harmed him. The motive behind the murder was not his wealth and gold, however, one of his eyes made him kill the old man. He hated his vulture-like eye and it persuaded him to murder the old man. The narrator says that the old man’s eye angered him so he made up his mind to kill him to shut that eye once and for all.

Again he tries to prove his sanity by admitting that he planned carefully to murder the old man making us aware that an insane person cannot plan. He informs his readers that for seven continuous nights he would go into the old man’s room, quietly, and would wait for the exact moment to commit the crime. He would examine the old man’s eye with the help of his lantern and would find it close. He would return annoyingly as it is his “Evil Eye” which motivates him to murder him. Ironically, in the morning he would ask the old man how he spent the night.

He continues with the story and tells us that on the night of the murder he went to the old man’s room with more caution. He wonders at his cunning plan and laughs at the old man’s lack of awareness. Out of nowhere, the old man sensed something and moved. The narrator tells us that he did not feel afraid as he knew the old man could not see him in the darkness. He, quietly, entered the room. The old man suspected something and asked who was in the room.

The narrator informs us that he did not move an inch for an hour knowing that the old man is alert. Then he hears a frightening cry from the old man sitting alert in his bed. He tells us that the old man knows not of his presence but he can assume his death impending upon him. Afterwards, he gradually puts light on the old man and realizes that his hateful eye is open. It makes him angry. He does not notice his face because he is not interested in it rather it is his eye that troubles him. The sight of his eye fills him with rage.

Furthermore, as he boasts of his increased hearing sense, he hears the beating of the victim’s heart. He tries to stay calm but the beating of the old man’s heart increases his anger. The narrator becomes anxious and is unable to bear his heartbeat anymore. The narrator takes the help of the bedsheets and holds it firmly “over his head”. The old man, slowly and gradually, suffocates and his heartbeat stops. The narrator takes a sigh of relief knowing that his eye will never trouble him again.

He again challenges those who question his sanity and tells them that they should consider how he hid the dead body so as no one can find it. He disjoints every part of the dead body carefully. Then he removes the planks and hides the pieces there cautiously making sure nothing is left behind. Afterwards, he puts the planks down again, with great care, so that no one can get a clue of their removal.

When he finishes, the clock strikes four in the morning. Someone knocks at the door. He calmly opens the door and realizes that three policemen have arrived. They have been called upon by one of the neighbors who heard the shriek of the old man. They are here to investigate any mishap. He receives them calmly and tells them that he shrieked because of a nightmare. He escorts them all over the house and tells them to do their search. He even leads them to the old man’s room and offers them chairs to sit there and rest.

He confesses that his calm demeanor made the cops believe his explanation and they sat calmly there. They chat continuously and after a while, the narrator wishes they should depart. Slowly and gradually, he becomes anxious and his calmness fades away. In the meantime, he hears some sound. At first, he perceives it to be inside his head but then he realizes that the sound is not internal rather it is in the room. He talks louder and causes commotion in the room to cover it up but it gets louder with the passage of time.

He walks to and fro in the room to make some noise but its intensity increases. However, the policemen seem not to hear it and they are busy chatting and smiling as usual. The narrator thinks the policemen know and they are laughing at his stupidity. He says he constantly suffered because of their smiles and hearing that sound. Eventually, he cannot stand it anymore and confesses his crime. He tells the policemen to uncover the planks and they will find the mutilated body of the old man and his pumping heart.

Mental Health

Poe’s story shows its readers the importance of mental health. The story demonstrates that mental illness can drive a person to the vilest acts. Psychological problems can lead individuals to act dangerously without any motive. The narrator, in the story, suffers from some mental problems which lead to his destruction.

He, time and again, denies the fact that he suffers from mental illness but his awkward actions prove that he suffers from some psychological problem. He is obsessed with killing the old man for no apparent reason and scrutinizes him for seven successive nights. The narrator, being paranoiac, kills the old man out of fear but that is not an acceptable reason.

Furthermore, he also enjoys the moment when he suffocates the old man, holding the bed sheets tightly over his face. This event makes him a sadist; who enjoys inflicting pain on others. This event also shows that he has some psychological problems. Through these events, Poe demonstrates the idea that an individual’s psychological health is as important as his physical health.

Guilt is another significant theme in the story. Although the narrator does not feel guilty of his crime openly, however, it is his guilty conscience which leads him to confess his crime. At first, he murders the old man in his room and calmly hides his dead body underground. Then he calmly receives the policemen and leads them across the house. However, in the hearts of his heart, he feels nervous with the passage of time.

Slowly and gradually, he hears sounds which he did not hear previously. He becomes anxious and tries to evade the sounds by making a commotion. However, his guilt does not leave him until he confesses his crime. He is of the opinion that the heartbeat is that of the old man’s heart but actually it is his own heart pumping with guilt. Externally, he enjoys killing the old man but his guilty conscience does not let him enjoy the brutal act.

Confinement

The theme of confinement is central to the story. The actions in the story are confined to a house only. Neither the narrator nor the old man go outside the house throughout the story. The narrator wants to break this confinement by murdering the old man but is unsuccessful. He murders the old man but never breaks his confinement.

The narrator thinks he will escape the life of confinement by killing the old man who is a threat to his freedom, according to him, but never succeeds. Instead, after killing he becomes more confined to the old man’s room. First, he would roam around the house but after killing him, he sits with the policemen in the old man’s room. He does not leave the room until he confesses his crime.

This confinement can imply that the narrator’s own psych has imprisoned him and he is unable to escape it. He thought he would gain freedom by killing the old man unaware of the fact that it is his mental confinement rather than his physical which never lets him free.

Characters Analysis

Characters are people who have some individual traits in a piece of writing. Without characters, a piece of literature looks dull. They are mouthpieces for a writer through which a writer expresses their opinions about a particular issue. Characters provide them with an outlet to contribute to the social structure. Some characters are major characters on which the writer focuses more while others are minor characters who have a supporting role in a piece of writing. 

Poe’s story revolves around the unreliable narrator who murders an old man for no apparent reason. Other characters in the story are not significant. The detailed analysis of his character is given below;

The Narrator

Poe does not give us information about the narrator’s gender. We, as readers, do not know whether he is a male or a female. We assume that he is a male and that is why we use the pronoun “He” for the narrator. After reading the story we conclude that he has many problems in his character; he suffers from paranoia, he is nervous and has some physical as well as mental illness. He tries to prove his sanity for the most part of the story.

After reading the story, we assume that the narrator acts according to his natural impulses. The narrator murders the old man because he thinks the old man is a threat to his individual freedom. Being paranoiac, the narrator assumes the old man is always trying to harm him, although he confesses that he has never harmed him, he acts in advance and takes his life. He murders the old man due to his own fear.

Furthermore, the narrator suffers from some kind of physical instability. His ears are hypersensitive and he hears sounds which others do not hear. We, as readers, do not know about his past and cannot claim that he suffers from some ailment but his awkward behavior and his physical instability make us think he is not physically fit.

As Poe lived most of his life in the southern United States we can, contextually, assume that the narrator is a “Southern Gothic Hero”. The narrator may have a master-slave relationship with the old man. It may be the case that the old man as a ‘master’ mistreats the narrator as a ‘slave’. This may have urged the narrator to murder the old man to get rid of his authoritative behavior.

Lastly, the narrator may be a sadist; ‘a person who derives pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from inflicting pain or humiliation on others’, and to fulfill his sadistic impulses he may have murdered the old man without any apparent reason.

The narrator’s character in the story is an enigmatic one and arises many questions in the readers’ minds. The above analysis is not blunt realities about his characters but mere assumptions.

Literary Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story poses many questions to be answered by the readers. The reality of the narrator, the motive behind his murder, his relationship with the old man, and the issues of his mental and physical health are to be discussed in this analysis section.

The narrator is an unreliable person having no specific name. Even we do not know about his gender. Most of the critics believe that the narrator is a male, as was the norm at that time, however, others believe that it may be a female character who narrates the story. The narrator acts illogically throughout the story and follows his instincts rather than his reason. On the basis of these qualities, some critics believe that the narrator might be a female because irrationality and emotionality were associated with women at that time. Poe focuses more on the events in the story rather than the individuals, so he leaves it open for his readers to decide whether the narrator is a male or a female.

There seems to be no motive behind the narrator murdering the old man except for the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ which the narrator dislikes. However, this excuse is not strong enough to take someone’s life. Critics believe that the narrator suffers from paranoia and his paranoiac personality leads him to commit the murder. A paranoiac person feels fear of others all the time. Same is the case with the narrator in the story. He feels afraid of the old man though he has never harmed him. In order to counter his fear, he kills the old man without any apparent reason.

On the other hand, the narrator may want individual freedom and that is why he kills the old man. He confesses himself that he was not targeting the old man’s gold or money. He may be struggling to gain freedom which may seem impossible if the old man lives so he decides to kill him. Ironically, he becomes more confined after murdering the old man. Consequently, we can say that there is no apparent reason for murdering the old man. These are mere speculations.

There are diverse opinions about the relationship between the narrator and the old man. They both live in the same house. The narrator loves the old man until he murders him. The old man never harms the narrator. Some critics opine that there is a master-slave relationship between the two. The old man serves as the master and the narrator is a slave to him. As the old man’s ‘Evil Eye’ is the object of hatred for the narrator, this relationship makes sense. The ‘Evil Eye’ represents the dominance of the old man which the narrator never accepts, so he tries to kill him to gain freedom.

Other critics believe that there is a father-son relationship between the two. However, according to my understanding of the story, this assumption is a little weak. Why, on earth, will a son kill his own father so brutally if he loves him and his father never harms him. It may happen, in some cases, but is not true for this story. A son will never go to such extremes to gain freedom from his father, according to my opinion. Finally, Poe leaves this relationship open for the readers to decide.

Furthermore, the narrator throughout the story tries to prove his sanity but his actions and his words are enough for the readers to conclude that he suffers from physical as well as mental problems. He leaves no stone unturned to prove that he is not a mad person but his actions prove otherwise. He gives logical reasons for his irrational act but fails. His motiveless murder, his sadistic attitude during the murder, and his calm demeanor after the murder prove that he suffers from some psychological problem.

He plans the murder methodically and never gives the old man a clue about his plan. However, he kills the old man without any evident reason which shows his psychological instability. His paranoiac mentality urges him to kill the old man before he could harm him. The motiveless murder also throws light on his sadistic personality. He enjoys inflicting pain upon others. He also enjoys mutilating the old man’s dead body. He does not shudder or feel any fear of doing this hideous act.

The narrator’s brutal act also refers to the inherently evil nature of human beings. He murders the old man without any rationale. This refers to the idea of the ‘Original sin’ which means that every human being has the tendency to sin or do evil acts, without any reason, because they are born sinners. William Golding in his novel Lord of the Flies also explores this idea of human being’s evil nature from birth. We can associate these ideas with the narrator as he kills the old man without any motive.

Poe’s story is a classic horror story. All elements of Gothic fiction are present in the story. The hidden corpse, the supernatural setting of the story, the horrible murder, and the mentally unstable protagonist, all these elements make it a classic example of Gothic fiction. The narrator, who is the protagonist of the story, suffers from some psychological problem and commits a murder without any obvious reason. He hears sounds which no one else hears, leading to the fact that he suffers from some mental problem.

Mystery and fear is another element of Gothic fiction which is also present in the story. The narrator, himself, is an enigmatic personality who no one knows fully. He has no name and no specific gender. He is paranoiac and his fear of being harmed leads him to murder the innocent old man. The setting of the story also conforms to the idea of Gothic fiction. The story is set in a bizarre and strange house with no detailed description. The narrator commits the murder in a dark room. The underground hiding of the corpse adds to the canny setting of the story.

The supernatural elements also add to the Gothic form in the story. The pounding heart of the dead old man comes to haunt the narrator. Whether it is the heartbeat of the old man’s heart or the narrator’s own heart is debatable, however, it increases the narrator’s anxiety. It haunts him until he confesses his crime to the policemen.

As Poe lived in times when Romanticism was at its peak so the influence of Romanticism is pretty much there in his fiction. He wrote about the strange and bizarre things and neglected literature for a didactic approach. He focused on emotions rather than rationale and wrote literature which had a direct effect on feelings and emotions. The narrator in the story acts according to his intuitions and does not care about the consequences. The Romantic influence on his writings is greater in this regard.

Settings in Romantic literature are some strange places and “The Tell-Tale Heart” is no exception. The story is, mainly, set in a horrible and bizarre room full of darkness. Poe believed that the greatest art should be set in a place which is different from the ordinary world and most of his stories are set in places which are out of this world, literally.

The influence of Romanticism is evident in Poe’s characterization. Most of his main characters have no names and no genders. The narrator in the story is also deprived of any name or gender. He focused on the overall effect of his art rather than on individuals’ importance. Lastly, the subject matter is also peculiar and unusual. According to Romantic writers, mundane subjects have no place in literature. Poe, himself hated ordinary and common subjects and dealt with the unusual. So he wrote about those subjects which amazed the common readers. He wrote literature that was horrific and not ordinary. The influence of Romanticism is evident in his writings.

The title of the story is significant. It points to the hearts of both the old man and the narrator. The old man’s heart beats rapidly when he perceives someone in his room. His heart awakens him to the danger in the room. However, the narrator gets furious and murders the old man. The next time, the pounding of the heart comes from the underground. This assumption is false because underground lies the mutilated body of the old man. This actually is the pounding of the narrator’s own heart. The narrator is nervous and his pumping heart reminds him of his guilty act. The heart “tells tales”, one of fear and the other of guilt.

The story is set in a house we, as readers know little of. Poe does not describe the house fully to his readers. The murder takes place in the bedroom of the old man which is dark and horrific.

Writing style

The structure and style of the story are very compact. It can be read in one sitting. The language is simple and there are seemingly no archaic words. There is a mixture of long and short sentences. The choice of words completely fits the subject matter in the story. Poe uses very authentic words to convey his idea in the best possible manner. It makes a powerful impact on the reader. 

All the events and situations comfortably lead to the climax in the story and then pass that intent into the befitting ending. The sentences are well connected and they fittingly play their role in taking the story to the desired ending. There is not a single loose thread. The sentences contribute to the overall effect of the story. The writer very tactfully makes this story powerful by the authentic use of language.

Point of View

The story is told by an untrustworthy narrator in the first person. For the most part of the story, he tries to prove that he does not suffer from some mental problems. Throughout the story, he tries to justify his irrational actions logically.

The tone of the story is gloomy and anxious. Though the narrator is a murderer yet the readers feel sympathy for him as he suffers from severe psychological problems. After the murder, he suffers from nervousness and feels guilty of his crime. The melancholic tone of the story is intermixed with the nervous feelings of the narrator.

The old man’s eye is the sole object of hatred for the narrator. He wants to shut it forever. If we assume that the relationship between the two is that of a master and slave then the eye represents the authoritative gaze of the master. The narrator shuts it to free himself from the dominance of the master. However, if the narrator is a female then the eye represents the authoritative gaze of a dominant male. The narrator then wanted to free herself of male dominance and murdered the old man.

On the other hand, the narrator refers to the eye of the old man as ‘vulture-like’. Vultures like to eat sick or dead animals. As a paranoiac, the narrator fears the old man will harm him so he acts to counter his fear and murders him to protect himself from being devoured.

The Bed and Bedroom

The bed and bedroom are the places of comfort and warmth generally. However, Edgar Allan Poe negates all the comfort associated with the bed and bedroom. The narrator openly spies on the old man when he sleeps in his room. He breaches all the norms of one’s bedroom and does not consider the privacy of the old man. Ironically, the bedroom becomes a place of agony for the old man. The narrator uses bed sheets as murder weapons to suffocate the old man and hides his body underground.

The house represents the subconscious of the narrator. When he hides the mutilated body of the old man underground, he symbolically hides his crime in his subconscious. Nonetheless, we can retrieve the information hidden in our subconscious mind. Same is the case with the narrator. His pounding heart reminds him of his own guilt and never stops until he confesses his crime to the policemen.

Poe uses irony to great effect in the story. Firstly, the narrator murders the old man because he hates his “vulture eye” and he deems it a flaw in his character. However, the narrator negates the fact that he also suffers from paranoia which is a severe flaw than the “vulture eye” of the old man. A person with severe illness murders a person with less severe physical flaws is ironic.

Secondly, the narrator boasts of his sanity and leaves no stone unturned to provide details that will prove his sanity to the readers. On the other hand, he gives a detailed analysis of how he murdered the old man without any reason. It is ironic because a healthy and sound person will never kill another person.He also confesses that he loves the old man who has never harmed him yet he brutally kills him. This is ironic because how can a person brutally kill a person he loves and who has never harmed him.

A person’s bedroom is a place of privacy and comfort for an individual. Poe makes the bedroom of the old man his death place, which is ironic. The narrator breaches all norms of the old man’s privacy and kills him in his own bedroom. Ironically, he uses his bed as a murdering weapon. He suffocates the old man using his bedsheets and hides his disjointed body underground in his bedroom. The old man’s bedroom, a place of warmth and comfort, becomes his graveyard.

In a nutshell, Edgar Allan Poe very tactfully conveys his message in this short story. He gives his readers an insight into the paranoiac mind of a person. Through this story, he enables his readers to not be deceived by outward expressions of an individual as he may be harmful to them inwardly. He also throws light on the significance of the mental health of an individual. He opines that psychological health is more important than physical health because it can lead individuals to their own destruction.

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Tell-Tale Heart, Essay Example

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“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe continues to remain one of the most fascinating and famous literary works in American history.  The chilling story truly represents the tales of a madman as he has clearly lost some semblance of sanity and is justified in killing an old man because of his ‘vulture’ eye.  The narrator may in fact be very unreliable in his retelling of the events that take place throughout the story.  His insanity may have altered how he truly viewed the world around him, especially with regards to the old man and his frightful eye.  It is clear that he does have enough sense about him to recall very finite details, which is something that an unreliable narrator would not be able to do.  Therefore, despite his insanity, the narrator helps the reader understand the true story of the events that took place surrounding the old man’s murder.

The beating heart in the story represents the narrator’s conscience and guilt that he feels for his actions against the old man.  The heart begins as a dull sound that just barely registers to the narrator, but then eventually escalates so loud and so painful that the narrator cannot take it anymore and confesses his actions.  It is not the actual sound of the heart that makes him confess, but the pounding of the narrator’s conscience and the weight of his actions upon his shoulders that forces him to do so.  For this reason, the climax of the story actually comes in the end.  This is the summation of all of the reader’s feelings for the narrator and the murder of the old man.  The pace of the story picks up during this scene and greatly heightens the emotions that the reader feels as the narrator fights with the sound of the beating heart.  Everything that happened throughout the story comes to a climactic finish as the narrator screams his confession to the police.  This was a perfect ending, and perfect climax for such a story and for this reason, among many others, the story still remains a major part of modern American literature.

Poe, Edgar A. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Literature.org – The Online Literature Library . Web. 21 Mar. 2010. <http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html>.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Tell Tale Heart — Tell Tale Heart Setting Analysis

Tell Tale Heart Setting Analysis

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The Tell-Tale Heart Psychological Analysis & Critique

Looking for The Tell-Tale Heart psychological analysis? This term paper focuses on the themes, symbolism, and point of view in the short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It also reviews the mental disorder that the narrator suffers from.

Introduction

• Literary Analysis

Works Cited

The Tell-Tale Heart is one of the most famous works by Edgar Poe. The outstanding character in the tale, who is also the narrator, attracts a lot of attention from the readers. The character reveals much about human nature and other self qualities that people tend to overlook.

Themes of death, egoism, and evil are found in most of Poe’s works. The same case applies to The Tell-Tale Heart as evidenced by the analysis in this paper. The analysis focuses on the main character and narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart. The analysis is conducted from a psychological approach.

There are various forms of literary psychological criticism. In this paper, the author uses the Freudian psychological approach to analyse Poe’s work. The narrator forms the basis of the tale. All the themes in the story revolve around them.

The literary critique explores the themes of death, ego, and evil as reflected in Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart . The themes of ego and evil are featured prominently in this critical review.

The two contribute immensely to the narrator’s actions. The literary criticism of the tale seeks to answer the question of human ego-evil relationship and associated psychological justifications. Freud’s psychological approach serves in analysing the narrator’s actions towards the old man.

The Tell-Tale Heart Summary

Edgar Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart tale adopts the first person perspective. The main character also assumes the role of the narrator. He begins the story by arguing that they are sane and not mad as people are saying.

The narrator says, “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” (Poe par. 1). However, Poe does not tell the reader whether the narrator is a male or a female. The usage of the connotation ‘He’ does not describe definite gender of the narrator, but just as an assumption.

The narrator admits that they are sick. However, they insist that the disease has sharpened their senses. The disease has not made them mad. In a bid to prove their sanity to the audience, the narrator embarks on the story. The events told in the story take place in a house where the narrator lives with an old man as a companion. The narrator claims that they loved the old companion very much.

As such, they did not have any reason or desire to kill him, not even for his money. The narrator reveals that they loved the old man. They were in good terms with the old man, and the narrator was not interested in stealing from him (Poe par. 2).

However, it appears that the old man had a deformed eye that instigated the narrator to commit the murder. In fact, if it were not for the eye, the story would have been very different. It follows then that the narrator has a motive to kill the old man.

Consequently, they scheme on how to execute the heinous crime. For seven consecutive nights, they stalked the companion throughout. They went to the extent of intensifying their affection for him to keep him close. On the eighth night, an opportunity presented itself and the narrator killed the old man.

The act of murder execution proceeds with extreme caution and the body concealment. However, a last minute shriek by the old man, or probably the excited yell of the narrator, changed the events. The arrival of police officers to the scene immediately after the crime attests to this.

The police arrived to a warm welcome from the narrator. Their arrival, they attribute to a scream they had been alerted to having emanated from the house. The police search the entire building but find nothing. Eventually, the narrator invited the two police officers into the deceased old man’s bedroom for a chat.

While there, however, the narrator imagined hearing the old man’s heartbeat. The heartbeat got louder and louder as the narrator and the two police officers chatted away in the bedroom. Finally, the imaginary noise freaked the narrator out. Eventually admits to having killed the old man, and in proof of his crime shows the police officers where he hid the dismembered body.

The Tell-Tale Heart Literary Analysis

Plot: psychological journey.

Poe adopts a very interesting approach in writing the story. The main character, who also performs the heinous murderous act, tells the story. As a result, we assume the story is a confession. The confession is evident given that even the narrator insists they can prove their sanity to the audience.

The location of the story remains unclear. However, an analysis of the story creates the impression that the location is a courtroom. Such an assumption looks fair given that the court could have declared the narrator to be of unsound mind. The story ends with the narrator revealing to the police officers where he hid the body. As such, it is likely that they are making the confession while under arrest.

The Tell-Tale Heart Themes

Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart story is riddled with a number of themes. The numbers of themes vary depending on the analytical approach chosen to review the story. As already indicated, the current analysis relies on the psychological approach of literary critique. Hence, from the perspective of this approach, it appears that several themes are apparent in the story.

The main themes in the story include ego, murder, evil, obsession, insanity, and guilt. Others include reality viewpoints, justification, time, and cleverness. The themes of evil, ego, murder and insanity are very dominant in the story.

From the start of the story, the narrator insists on being sane. Consequently, the narrator details their heinous crime to prove their sanity. Even after the detailed narration, the narrator still insists on their sanity. They insist that they took a lot of precautions to cover their tracks, something that can only be done by a sane man (Poe par. 8).

In a number of instances, the narrator reminds the audience how cleverly they executed the murder. The assertion is evident when they claim, “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!” (Poe par. 3).

Despite the frantic effort to convince his sanity, the narrator falls under Freud’s psychic zone of id. The id zone has a number of distinct characteristics. It is characterised by an excite­ment that is disorganized and lacks will. It is an impulsive drive that is aimed at satisfying the instincts and pleasures of the individual (Freud 103).

About the theme of murder, the narrator’s motive is amusing, if not ridiculous. The ‘admitted motive’ is evident when the narrator says that the old man had the eye of a vulture. They describe it as “a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees –very gradually –I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe par. 2).

The execution of the heinous crime is almost perfect. The narrator leaves no trace behind. However, their confession raises doubts about their sanity. It is clear that the narrator is a ruthless murderer, considering how they killed and dismembered the old man’s body for concealment.

The theme of obsession, and in some part that of guilt, is apparent from the beginning of the story. The desire to murder the old man increases whenever the narrator sees his deformed eye. It appears the narrator is obsessed with the deformed eye. The obsession to murder the old man based on his bad eye intensifies when the narrator sees him in bed.

The narrator does not exhibit obvious psychological motives. However, killing the old man based on the feelings the eye stirs in them is an indication of a possible motive. Indeed, motives for individual actions arise from thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. The narrator fantasises killing the old man, revealing this aspect of human thinking in the process.

Such an obsession and the narrator’s erratic behaviour, together with how they narrate the story, leave no doubt that they are insane. In fact, the narrator believes that the heartbeat of the dead old man nearly drove them insane to the extent of confessing to the crime. They describe how they shrieked and showed the police where they had hidden the body (Poe par. 10).

The Tell-Tale Heart Character Analysis

The story has six major characters. They include narrator, the old man (who ends up as the victim), the neighbour, and the three police officers. However, the story revolves more around the narrator and the old man than it does around the other characters.

In fact, one can argue that the narrator and the old man are the main characters. The other four are just supporting characters. Poe is not clear on the identity of the narrator’s audience. It is not clear whom the narrator is trying to convince with the confession.

The Tell-Tale Heart Narrator

Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart revolves a lot around human nature. Human nature is made evident from the narrator’s viewpoint. The narrator is very confident in the execution of the heinous crime. They are confident enough to confess about the same. The desire to prove their sanity is even more intriguing. As a result, the narrator creates a picture of self-worthiness, self-conviction, and lack of remorse.

The narration turns out to be a perfect rhetoric in relation to the narrator. From the beginning to the end of the story, the narrator makes the reader view their deeds with contempt a number of times. Perhaps, as Zimmerman puts it, The Tell-Tale Heart is in real sense a form of courtroom rhetoric-judicial. It is a form of forensic oratory (Zimmerman Frantic Forensic Oratory 34).

The narrator appears determined to convince someone with his or her confession. The determination is evident when they insist that mad men know nothing (Poe par. 3). The narrator’s reference to “you” clearly shows that they are addressing someone else.

Perhaps the narrator is writing to or conversing with this ‘you’. The narrator tries to persuade and guide the audience to their point of view. Essentially, it is clear that the narrator has already confessed to the crime. They have already shown the police the body before their confession (Poe par. 10).

The narrator is defending themselves in the story. They do not regard the heinous act with any remorse or contempt. From this analysis, one can argue that the story reveals one major aspect of human nature that is inherent to many individuals. Generally, many people tend to overlook their individual flaws and faults. They may do everything in their power to cover up these flaws and faults (Bonaparte 32).

Ki points out the theme of “ego-evil”, which underlies the ‘main’ human nature highlighted in the narration (25). By definition, ego-evil refers to human behaviour that is, according to Zizek (70), driven by the desire for selfish gains and greed.

Such behaviour is very apparent concerning the conduct of the narrator. When one disregards the sanity of the narrator, which they seem to assert loudly, a sensible motive for their action is lost. In the words of the narrator, the old man had not done anything to anger them, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me” (Poe par. 2).

From the discourse above, it is apparent that associating the narrator with ego-evil behaviour is logical. In essence, the narrator’s actions are motivated by some form of ideological ideal. The actions also emanate from their fanatical devotion (Ki 25).

The narrator’s egocentrism is apparent in their ‘over-identification’ with the views they hold. Such a trait on the part of the narrator ultimately leads to a form of “narcissistic ‘denigradation’ of others and violation of human laws” (Zizek 70).

The narrator claims killing the old man due to his bad eye. In essence, the narrator admits the old man’s vulture eye is what made them commit the offense (Poe par. 2). Such an explanation tells a lot about the narrator’s state of mind. Regarding the old man’s eye as identical to that of a vulture gives the narrator the motivation they need to commit the crime.

With such an attitude, they could easily kill the man without any remorse. As such, the narrator judged the old man based on personal affections, rather than on truth. Ki (25) explains this behaviour from a psychological perspective.

According to Ki (25), an intentional misjudgement of another person is an indication of the shortcomings of the self. It means that the self lacks insight (Ki 25). Killing the old man would rid the narrator the ‘torturing’ eye. Such an explanation appears valid from a psychological perspective.

The narrator is a true representation of ‘self-misrepresentation’. Their character also shows the narrator has ‘misdirected’ sense of self-worth and self-righteousness. Both of these aspects are blown out of proportion concerning the narrator. From the onset of the narrative, the persona appears determined to point out their strengths, which are in doubt.

In their narration, the persona says that the disease has only made their senses shaper. They claim to have heard things from heaven and from earth. According to them, this is proof enough that they are sane and not mad (Poe par. 1).

The narrator’s sense of self is terrible, especially with regards to their senses. Such a convoluted sense of self leads to another conclusion. The conclusion is that the narrator is psychotic. The psychotic nature of the narrator is the first impression created in the mind of the reader at the beginning of the narrative. However, the narrator endeavours to prove otherwise in the narrative.

Further analysis of the narration reveals that the persona is a ‘self-positing’ individual. They try to create the impression of an individual who is very right. They claim that they discovered their powers on that night. They were so happy when they discovered how intelligent they are (Poe par. 4). Such a ‘perception of self’ means that the narrator likes to exercise their powers on others.

Perceptions of own power, triumph, and sagacity also portray the narrator as a person who likes to dominate the helpless. The old man was asleep and half-blind due to the darkness and his bad eye, yet the narrator was triumphant of killing him. Pitcher (232) portrays the narrator in Poe’s tale as someone living in a universe where the self is the only god that exists.

Eventually, it is apparent that the narrator fails miserably to convince the audience of their sanity or self-importance. According to Melville (34), the narrator appears to fully understand the various techniques of argument. They are trying desperately to convince the audience.

Initially, the narrator indicates that they are aware of what the audience thinks of them. The narrator is aware that the audience considers them as a hostile, nervous, and lunatic person. Because of this awareness, the narrator attempts to win over the good will of whoever is listening to them.

The narrator lodges an appeal to the audience’s sense of reason to mitigate the hostility directed towards them. Such an appeal is also aimed at making the audience more receptive. The narrator tells the audience that they wish they were there when they were committing the offense. The audience, according to the narrator, would have seen for themselves how efficient and wise they (the narrator) are (Poe par. 3).

The narrator strategically makes use of concession as a means of ethical appeal. They try to impress the audience by proving that they can make frank confessions. They create the impression that they are a good person with a strong and confident streak. They try to prove that they can confidently concede and nullify opposing points of view.

The nature of Poe’s character in the story can be summed up from John Claggart’s psychoanalysis perspective (as cited in Melville). Thus, “the narrator’s even temper and discerning bearing would seem to point to an individual peculiarly exposed to the law of reason” (Melville 76). The narrator has little or nothing to do with reason.

They only employ it as an ‘ambidexterity’ means of irrational affections. Such evaluation implies that the narrator is engaging in wanton atrocities that appear to be the reserve of the insane. They are engaging in such acts based on very ‘direct’ and ‘cool’ judgement. As such, one can conclude that the narrator is a mad man and very dangerous.

According to Zimmerman ( Moral Insanity or Paranoid Schizophrenia? 42), Poe effectively maintains an objective distance in telling the story and watches as the reader tackles the etiological irony that follows. Poe uses rhetoric consciously and deliberately in most of his homicidal tales.

He also engages in irony in most of his arguments. Most of Poe’s characters try to justify their actions using ‘reasonable’ excuses that are not so ‘reasonable’. Such an approach is apparent in The Tell-Tale Heart story.

Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation, London: Hogarth P., 1949. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners , New York: James A. McCann Co., 1920. Print.

Ki, Magdalen. “Ego-Evil and the Tell-Tale Heart.” Renascence 61.1 (2008): 25-38. Print.

Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962. Print.

Pitcher, Edward. “The physiognomical meaning of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.” Studies in Short Fiction 16.3 (1979): 231-233. Print.

Poe, Edgar 1922, The Tell-Tale Heart . Web.

Zimmerman, Brett. “Frantic Forensic Oratory: Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.” Style 35.1 (2001): 34-49. Print.

—. “Moral Insanity or Paranoid Schizophrenia: Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.” Mosaic 25 (1992): 39-48. Print.

Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry , Cambridge: MIT, 1991. Print.

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