is the narrator of the tell tale heart insane essay

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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Poe's Stories

Edgar allan poe, everything you need for every book you read., narrator (the tell-tale heart) quotes in poe's stories.

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.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? – now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

Insane Narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart by Poe

Short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe always provoke several unpredictable and spooky emotions. If the reader wants to find a story with a strange plot and the most irrational characters, it is high time to pay attention to Poe’s works. This author was never ordinary, and his words usually revealed the scariest horrors in human life and human behavior. After reading The Tell-Tale Heart , the first thought that comes to my mind is that the narrator is insane. This story begins with a description of the relationships between the narrator and the old man, whose eye “resembled that of a vulture” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). The desire to take someone’s life because of an eye sounds crazy, and a person has to be mad to think about it wisely and cautiously. It is evident that the character has a personality disorder, and the goal of this paper is to analyze the symptoms and prove the offered diagnosis. In The Tell-Tale Heart , the narrator is insane due to his paranoid personality disorder confirmed by hearing sounds, developing a plan for murder, and being obsessed with a single subject.

Firstly, it is correct to say that the narrator’s mind is disturbed because of the sounds he hears. A healthy person may consider these voices as the individual’s conscience about the recently taken action. A religious man should interpret the same sounds as the message from hell and the necessity to confess the sin. The reaction of the main character to that “low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” is a sign of an unstable person (Poe, 1843, p. 8). He does not share his doubts with other people and tries to figure out what is happening to him at the moment, believing that an evil spirit is going to take over his body, and nothing can help him. According to Cherry (2020), the symptoms of paranoid personality disorder include the intention to look for hidden meanings and the necessity to stay secretive, isolated, and cold. Being paranoid means being insane; so, it is appropriate to conclude that the narrator is insane because of the impossibility to get rid of the sound in his head, the sound of his victim’s heart.

Secondly, the insanity of the narrator may be explained through the prism of his actions and the justification of a murder plan. It is expected of people to plan their day, a working schedule, shopping activities, or parties. However, to plan a murder is never normal but inherent to psycho killers or paranoid individuals. The character’s attention to the details and the desire to share his maturity and caution frighten him. He seems to be proud of his week-long preparation when “every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it – oh, so gently” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). The narrator thinks about the killing process with precise details. According to Amir (2018), the anaphoric use of words in the story helps to intensify the description that is inherent to an insane person. It is necessary to take enough time and make sure that no single drop of blood to be on the floor, as well as no single person, hears his manipulations with a floorboard. It was not a cold murder but a well-thoughtful plan on how to reach the target, take action and hide the body.

Thirdly, it is necessary to admit that the narrator is very obsessed with one particular object, the vulture’s eye, as he claims the old man has. When he feels the look from “a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” his “blood ran cold” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). This feeling is enough for the man to kill a person who offers the place to live. Obsession is a dangerous and unpredictable condition, and it turns out to be one of the signs of insane behavior. According to Merriam-Webster (n.d.), an obsessed person is preoccupied with irrational thoughts. In Poe’s work, there are many good examples of the main character’s obsession. For example, in the beginning, his obsession is directed to the eye of the victim. During the development of the story, obsession is observed in his repetitive actions and the intention to disprove his madness. Finally, his mental breakdown is provoked by a paranoid obsession with sounds. He uses nervousness as the disease that “had sharpened my senses – not destroyed” (Poe, 1843, p. 3). However, any mental health change needs to be treated, and its progress must be assessed.

To conclude the story of a one-night murder, enough evidence has been gathered to prove that the narrator is insane. Such signs as hallucinations, the disturbed mind, and obsessive thinking cannot be ignored to confirm the diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder. This condition is characterized by the inability to understand that something wrong happens. The narrator’s behavior is out of the ordinary, and the reader sees the proof in his actions, thoughts, and the necessity to explain every decision and step. His paranoid obsession with the old man’s eye is evident and makes him insane. The inability to cope with the multiple symptoms of a mental health disorder has a tremendous impact on the narrator. His confession is a matter of time but not because of his feeling of guilt but because of confusion and his weakness. The story shows that it may be easy to take someone’s life and develop a perfect murder plan. However, it is always hard to live with the consequences and negative emotions that absorb the best qualities of a morally stable person after committing a crime that cannot be justified.

Amir, S. (2018). Stylistic analysis of the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Angloamericanae Journal, 3 (1), 18-28. Web.

Cherry, K. (2020). Paranoid personality disorder . Verywell Mind. Web.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d). Obsess. In Merriam-Webster dictionary . Web.

Poe, E. A. (1843). The tell-tale heart [eBook edition]. Online Books Page. Web.

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The Tell-Tale Heart Essay

If you’re writing a paper about Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart essay examples are a useful source of inspiration. You can find one such example here!

The Tell Tale Heart is a short story about a nameless narrator who commits murder. The narrator kills an old man who had a blue vulture like eye that made the narrator very uncomfortable. He plans the murder, executes it, and hides the body of the old man in the floorboard. The story falls under the gothic genre (Snodgrass, 2005). The story falls under the gothic category because it is a horror story that tells how a young narrator kills an old man in cold blood and dismembers his body in order to conceal his crime.

The killer claims he is sane and goes into details to explain how he executed the murder. However, when the police came to the Old Man’s house he gives himself away to the police because he hears the heart of the old man beating behind the floorboard and this incident may suggest that the narrator is in fact insane. The author of the story is Edgar Allan Poe an American author who was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston Massachusetts.

His parents David and Elizabeth died before Poe celebrated his second birthday. After their death, he lived with John and Frances Allan, a childless couple. His childhood was sad, he experienced death of his loved at a young age, and the deaths influenced his works, which have the theme of grisly deaths (Meyer, 2000). Poe’s s misery and suffering reverberates in his works and in popular culture today long after his death.

Poe’s story is culturally significant as it shows how the society was during his time. The people were beginning to have an interest in moral insanity (Bynum, 1989). For instance, it is difficult to tell why the narrator killed the old man at the end of the story was it insanity or plan evil disguised as fear of the pale blue eye? The narrator says that he loved the old man and the man had never wronged him yet he still kills the Old man.

The narrator’s sense of morality seems to be suspended because the brutal killing of the old man does not prick his or her conscience but disturbed by the thought that the police know who has committed the murder and only toying with the narrator’s mind. The story is economically successful even though Poe was not able to reap big economical gains from it and his other works and struggled economically.

The story is underpinned in the popular culture as people try to explain murders in which the perpetrators confess (Bloom, 2002). However, the story is economically successful because it has a large following today and it is still widely read. Moreover, the story has been adapted into the popular culture into various media such as television programs, movies that are widely watched and popular such as the Simpsons.

Lastly, the story reinforces the cultural values of moral insanity as the story tries to explain why some people commit horrendous murders to their beloved ones without a valid cause. In the society today, it is common to hear of stories about people killing people close to them for very funny reason like the prisoner in a jail who killed his cellmate because he heard voices tell him to commit the murder (Burrell, 2001).

The Tell Tale Heart is still a relevant story today as it shows how human beings can be demented and invokes people to look more into the lives and psychology mind of the people who commit despicable murders.

Reference List

Bloom, H. (2002). Edgar Allan Poe. New York : Infobase Publishing.

Burrell, I. (2001). Murderer who mutilated inmate locked up for life. Web.

Bynum, P.M. (1989). The Tell Tale Heart and other stories. Ed. Bloom Harold . Web.

Meyers. J. (2000). Edgar Allan Poe: his life and legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press.

Snodgrass, M.E. Encyclopedia of Gothic literature . New York: Infobase Publishing.

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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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“The Tell- Tale Heart”, written in 1843, is a simultaneous horror and mental story presented in a first- person perspective, in which Edgar Allan Poe, the author, portrays that the significant influence of inner guilty and fear on narrator’s insane. The author achieves this in the means of figurative languages, symbolism and the plot of the story.

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The narrator of this story simply wanted to kill this man because of his eye. He did not have another reason to kill the man, they were on good terms with each other. He tells the readers he loved the old man and that the old man did not do anything to him. The narrator was triggered by the old mans eye, he did not tell us why but that it made his blood run cold. He came to the conclusion that he has to kill the old man. His mental state was not in good a state, wanting to kill someone for an eye is irrational and insane. He could have went many other ways, getting a new job, not looking at his eyes and looking at his forehead, that would be a rational decision.

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Edgar Allen Poe is very well known for several profound short stories.

Edgar Allen Poe is very well known for several profound short stories. The Tell Tale heart is known around the world. The story The Tell Tale Heart, by Edgar Allen Poe Shows the reader the inner complexity behind the unnamed, main character who in this particular story is also the narrator for the reader. Poe portrays a character whose almost every sensory that is used in the story becomes a reminder of the crime he has committed. The conflict within the narrator is extremely noticeable in the beginning of this story. Due to obvious clues and statements, Poe indicates that the Narrators metal state is indeed insanity. The insanity begins to worsen because the narrator’s obsession with the old man’s eye which causes him to lose

“He shrieked once-once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him...The old man was dead” (Poe). On the eighth night of watching the old man sleep, the narrator accidentally made a noise with his lantern and woke the old man, this was when the narrator attacked the old man. In The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator murdered an old man he was caring for. He killed the man due to the feeling he got when the old man looked at him with his “vulture” eye. The narrator keeps attempting to persuade the reader he is sane. Even though the narrator says what he says, he is completely insane.

• The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allen Poe strives to achieve a single, unified effect in each of his short stories. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Poe works to highlight the effect of the narrator’s madness on the reader’s perception both of the narrator and the events of the story. Using first person point of view, elevated language, awkward sentence structure, and other literary techniques, Poe keeps the reader focused on the obvious madness and subsequent untrustworthy nature of the narrator, providing a unique and chilling perspective into the murder of the old man.

Analysis Of The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

When reading “The Tell-Tale Heart” but Edgar Allan Poe, some people are frightened by the actions of the narrator, while others are led to question his true thought process and sanity. In the opinion of some, he is nothing but a mentally insane person unaware of his actions, while others believe he is a calculated killer who thirsted for the blood of the old man, planning his actions accordingly. When you read the story closely, it becomes apparent that the man is mentally insane, and was not in control of his actions when he murdered the old man, whom he claimed to love.

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The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

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The Tell Tale Heart Sane Analysis

Show More If a person's sanity is in question, don't you think you should look through all the facts and interpret them carefully and accurately? Edgar Allen Poe wrote, "The Tell-Tale Heart", a short story told in the first person by the self-confessed murderer of an old man. The narrator is clearly sane. However, many other readers of the story believe that the narrator of “The Tell-Heart” is insane. The Narrator knew what he was doing was wrong. While this admittedly seems plausible, the narrator of the tell-tale heart is sane because he does not have the characteristics it takes to be legally insane. Some of these characteristics are that he doesn't know what he's doing is wrong, that he unaware of surroundings, that his actions have illogical reasons or not reasons at all, that he is confused about daily life, that his emotions are above and beyond what is normally expected for a given situation, that he is unable to resist impulses. The Tell-Tale heart narrator is very sane. …show more content… He does not have any of the traits that are required to be legally insane. There is information that proves that he is sane. He knows what he's doing is wrong, and is also aware of surroundings, his actions have logical reasons, he understands daily life, his emotions are appropriate for a given situation, and he is able to resist impulses. After he almost got away with the old man's murder, he confessed to the police because he was too guilty to resist. The Narrator said, "'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 narrator). This information shows that the narrator can't be insane because the narrator knew that what he was doing was wrong, otherwise he would not have been guilty enough to confess to the police when he would otherwise have gotten away with the

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The narrator of the short story, “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, is seen by the reader to be insane. This is assumed throughout the story and even at the very beginning due to the narrators over-use of persuasion towards the reader that he is not mad. The narrator is seen as being crazy or, more and more insane, as the story continues on. Evidence of this madness is shown in many different situations, and also is shown through the narrator’s thoughts during certain parts of the story. The narrator claims later in the story that there are reasons behind the actions that he decides to take.…

Who Is Guilty By Reason Of Insanity

]]\ 1.Probst, Steven R. "Insanity." World Book Student, World Book, 2017, www.worldbookonline.com/student/article?id=ar277260. Accessed 5 Apr. 2017. Insanity is a legal term for any mental disease or defect severe enough to prevent someone from being legally responsible for his or her actions. Under many systems of criminal law, someone found to be insane cannot be guilty of a crime, but a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity may still be considered dangerous.…

Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Essay

Edgar Allen Poe captivated everyone with the short story The Tell-Tale Heart, which forced readers to questions one's mental state, deciding on whether someone is guilty or innocent, whether someone is conscious of their actions, or if they are sane or criminally insane. The Tell-Tale Heart is the perfect example of the argument of whether an individual is aware of their actions and the crimes they commit or if they are possessed and driven to commit crimes by something in their mind, in which they could possibly use an insanity plea during their trial if they are caught. The narrator, who Edgar Allen Poe portrays as insane, is not, and during this essay, I will outline examples as to why he is not and that he is fully aware of the crimes that he is committing. The first example as to his premeditation is how he is explaining the story to the audience.…

The Tell Tale Heart Analysis

4. He is unreliable a narrator because he suffers from hallucinations. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" acts as if he had the selective omniscience of a third-person narrator. Approaching the old man's bed on the night of the crime, the narrator claims to know what his victim "had been…

Tell Tale Heart From The Old Man's Perspective Analysis

The Tell-Tale Heart (From The Old Man’s Perspective) I have been a heavy smoker all my life. As I got older, I began to realize that death was slowly creeping in my direction on silent feet. However, I never would have imagined one day meeting a much more tragic fate. Ever since my grandson’s 13th birthday, my health has declined rapidly.…

Compare And Contrast The Cask Of Amontillado And The Tell Tale Heart

Edgar Allen Poe Essay “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Poe, TTH 49). Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell Tale Heart show us a terrifying world of madness and murder. The sensory details to the narrator 's thoughts provide the audience with a display of mental instability and madness. From envy to obsession, these stories show equal amounts of a specific mental delusion, urging the narrator to commit an unthinkable crime.…

Examples Of Schizophrenia In The Tell Tale Heart

Brad MacFee ENGL-102-75A 12/3/2017 Essay #4 How the Tell-Tale Signs of Schizophrenia Provide a Motive for Killing “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, features a schizophrenic narrator who recounts the sequence of events leading up to the murder of an old man and his eventual confession to the murder. Throughout the story, the narrator exhibits many strange behaviors that suggest that he is quite abnormal. For example, the narrator describes his extreme vendetta against, not the old man, but his “evil eye,” (Edgar Allan Poe). By the end of the story, the narrator has a friendly conversation with the police about the old man until he begins hearing a ringing sound that he says progressively grew in volume. The increasing volume of the sound led him to ultimately lash out in confession to the murder of the old man.…

Characteristics Of The Narrator In The Black Cat

At the beginning of the short story, the narrator insists that he is not crazy. Poe writes, “Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet mad am I not…” (Poe 1). Although he continue to insists that he is a normal person, the narrator’s judgement is untrustful because his actions are not based off of a good morality. Since the narrator lacks a good morality, this gives him a poor sense of judgement, proving he is unreliable.…

Related Topics

• Edgar Allan Poe
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• Gothic fiction
• Short story
• The Fall of the House of Usher

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