Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 1

Hales Adnana

Hurubean Raluca

Orosfoian Andreea

Todoran Paula

RO-EN

Professor: Darvay Daniel

American Literature

March 18, 2020

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe known for his horrifying tales of mystery, sickening madness and buried

bodies dealt with an antithetical reception: while some critics saw him as a madman, Terence

Whalen says that Poe is “Far from being the wild offspring of an autonomous or diseased mind”

suggesting that “Poe’s tales were… the rational product of social labour, imagined and executed

in the workshop of American capitalism” (Whalen 9). His experiences shaped his writings in a

very unique way. The deaths of his mother, his foster mother and his wife deeply affected his

psychic. Poe had a very rough journey regarding his writings, and not only, and this is portrayed

in the way he wrote. Despite his allegedly use of opium and alcohol, his works are close to

perfection.

Even though Poe’s tales are founded solidly on Gothic tradition, his modification of the

Gothic, by relying on the depths of the troubled minds rather than on the ”classic” Gothic

scenario and settings (haunted castles or cathedrals, supernatural figures that seek vengeance),
 Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 2

allows him to create great art while exploring different sources of inspiration, as Benjamin

Franklin Fisher notes: ”Poe divined how he could manipulate conventions of Gothicism to create

fine psychological fiction” (Fisher 84). Poe appropriated terror as a major thesis, but in most of

his works this terror is internalized. The emphasis is no longer on the external environment as a

source of states of distress and fear, but on the external world as a symbol for the interior of the

human minds. In this respect, Fisher claims the following: ”Poe found in Gothic tradition the

very kinds of settings and characters that, transformed in his imagination, would contribute

wonderful symbolism to psychologically plausible narratives of multiple outreach” ( Fisher 84).

In The Tell-Tale Heart the house will be the environment conducive to the actual deed: the

murder of the old man. The isolation revealed by the narrator through his/her confessions is the

ominous of the unrecognized guilt. In Freudian terms, during the seven nights of nocturnal visits,

the narrator’s urge to kill is repressed. But, in the eighth night, the crucial image of the eye will

become the device that will stop the repression.

The Tell-Tale Heart appeals in terms of its Gothicism, the narrator revealing the story bit

by bit creating a heavy feeling o suspense. The story is a first-person narrative with an unreliable

narrator that tells his story in great detail, sometimes pretending to know even the feelings of the

old man.

The confessional tone in which the story commences captures the narrator’s attempts of

convincing the reader, and maybe even himself, that he is not mad. However, giving the fact that

the story begins with a conversation already in progress another possibility of interpretation

arises: the narrator recalls the events in the presence of an unknown character which could be a

priest, a judge or a family member. Whatever the circumstances are, the purpose of his

declaration is proving his sanity, but the speaker rather speaks against himself. As he speaks he
 Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 3

convince us otherwise, his discourse convicts him. His later revealed action would condemn him

irrevocably. In his persuasive attempt we witness a series of pshychological contradictions,

followed by episodes of paranoia that contribute to a murderous profile. The narrator argues

against madness using his sensory capacity as a defence, although he is ”very dreadfully

nervous” (Poe 1) the condition did not affect his senses, but sharpened them. Beside acute

sensibility, rationality and calmness in ploting and commiting the murder are, in the narator`s

point of view, additional proof of his sanity. In fact, his meticulously in spying the old man

several nights and in cutting and hiding his body only reflect that he is, indeed, a mad man. After

seven nights of constant visits, the eighth night seems to be the most favorable opportunity for

the fulfilment of his morbid plan. Despite his rationality in explaining his deeds before the crime,

after the crucial moment, the narrator gradually shows an inability to relinquish his control.

One of the first things that nullifies the narrator’s claim to sanity is his problem in

remembering the reason behind his horrifying act. Is it impossible for the reader, in this case, to

accept that the speaker acted in a state of full consciousness and rationality. The speaker efforts

to outline his motives cause the reminiscence of the past events: not revenge nor desire for gold

were his driving forces, but the fear of the eye of the man. The identity of the man remains

unknown for the whole story, the narrator talking only about the thing that obsessed him: the

man’s evil eye and its effects: creating a strange feeling of nervousness and distress. The ”Evil

Eye” or the ”vulture eye” becomes the symbol of a force that can exercise complex control over

the speaker. The image of the vulture watching upon its prey, waiting for the perfect moment to

devour it, can symbolize the narrator’s terror of the old man, that could in a sense control or hurt

him, and the constant fear that haunts him because of his eye. However, the whole meaning of

the symbol changes when we access the homophone of "evil eye": evil I, as in evil self. Arthur
 Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 4

Robinson, discussing the mechanism of projection formulates the following key of interpretation:

the narrator’s evil I is what makes him to see the ”evil eye” in the old man, meaning that the

narrator projection onto the old man reveals his true self (Robinson 377). The same interpretation

can function for the vulture I construction: the speaker sees the old man as a predator and plots

his murder, thinking that he could do the same, when in fact this hypothesis is only a projection

of his sick mind.

The beating of the heart is also an important element in understanding the story. The

narrator hears the beating of the old man’s heart twice: first right after he murders him and and

then when the police officers arrive. Given the fact that the speaker hears the heart in two of the

most crucial moments of the story, both related to his horrifying act, the idea that emerges is that

the beating of the heart (whether it’s the narrator’s or the old man’s) is the sound o a guilt.

Regarding the symbolism of the heart Fisher writes: ”When he thinks he can hear the beating of

the dead man’s heart, which drives him over the brink, what our narrator actually experiences is

the urgings of his own guilty conscience gone mad” (Fisher 87).

As Tony Magistrate proves, there is a bond between the victim and the victimizer and

that is established by two factors: a symbolical juxtaposition using the eye and the terror of

death. After committing the crime, his rationality is not yet suppressed by his madness. His

intellect is not affected. He succeeds in covering his tracks but only up to a certain point. The old

man’s heart starts beating inside the narrator’s head. This is the moment in which his rationality

is suppressed. The shared terror of death is revealed and there is an impossibility in departing the

bond established between the killer and the victim. The murder is only ”violence that is first

perpetrated upon a victim, only to then be turned about the victimizer” (Magistrate 84). Tony

Magistrate went up to the point where he argues that there is an inability ”to distinguish whose
 Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 5

heart is actually beating” (Magistrate 85). This is the moment when the victimizer admits the

deed. Under a tension illustrated by the pressure exerted by the beating heart in his head, he has

nothing left to do besides admitting what he did. ”I foamed−I raved−I swore!” (Poe 8) followed

by ”They heard!−they suspected−they knew!” (Poe 8) provide the formal signs of the

rationality’s annihilation. Those appear to the reader like a crescendo of the tension that leads to

the climax. Thus, as a symbol, the heart betrays impulsiveness and emotions engrossed by the

perception and sensibility represented by the eye. This connection between the murderer and the

murdered is amplified by the fact that ”(…)from the second paragraph of the tale it is clear that

the eye of the old man is meant to be juxtaposed symbolically with the first person narrative ’I’

of the storyteller” (Magistrate 84). There is no confessed reason of the crime aside from the

turmoil produced by ”the vulture eye” of the old man in the narrator’s depths. Thus, the ’eye’ is

exerting control against the ”I”.

What is really particular about this story is that Poe succeeded in creating a voice that is

inside a diseased mind by capturing the episodes of paranoia, the denial of insanity and the

process of mental deterioration. The narrator in ”The Tell-Tale Heart”, says Paige Matthey

Bynum, is a morally insane man, because the disease affected the moral responsibility alone,

without involving a disorder of the intellect (Bynum 141-142). As we have seen, the character is

trying to provide a rational explanation for a very irrational act, his intellect is in no way

affected, but this does not make him any less insane: ”The title itself may embody an irony;

although the narrator tries to establish the rationalism in his madness, he is nevertheless betrayed

by his “heart,” that is, his emotions” (Fisher 87). Allowing like many characters in Gothic fiction

their nerves to dictate their nature, the narrator convicts himself not only thru the act of murder,
 Hales, Hurubean, Orosfoian, Todoran 6

but thru his condition that allows him to hear ”all the things in heaven and in the earth” (Poe 1)

and the heart of the old man, as well as thru his desperation to prove his sanity.

Works Cited:

Bynum P.M., “Observe How Healthily — How Calmly I Can Tell You the Whole Story”: Moral

Insanity and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, in: Literature and Science as

Modes of Expression, edited by Frederick Amrine, vol. 115. Springer, 1989

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin, "Poe and the Gothic Tradition", in The Cambridge Companion to

Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2004

Magistrate, Tony, Student’s Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Lonon, Greenwoood Press, 2001

Poe, Edgar Allan, The Tell-Tale Heart, Penguin Books, 2015

Robinson, E. Arthur, ‘‘Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’’’ In Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 19, no.

4, March 1965

Whalen, Terence, Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses: The Political Economy of Literature in

Antebellum America, Princeton University Press, 1999