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    10 The Tell-Tale Heart Analysis

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    Umashankar S
    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author famous for his tales of mystery and horror. Some of his most well known works include "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced the modern detective story. "The Tell-Tale Heart" follows an unnamed narrator who insists they are sane after killing an old man, but is ultimately driven mad by the sound of the old man's heart beating beneath the floorboards.

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    10 The Tell-Tale Heart Analysis

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    Umashankar S
    11 views9 pages
    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author famous for his tales of mystery and horror. Some of his most well known works include "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced the modern detective story. "The Tell-Tale Heart" follows an unnamed narrator who insists they are sane after killing an old man, but is ultimately driven mad by the sound of the old man's heart beating beneath the floorboards.

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    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author famous for his tales of mystery and horror. Some of his most well known works include "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced the modern detective story. "The Tell-Tale Heart" follows an unnamed narrator who insists they are sane after killing an old man, but is ultimately driven mad by the sound of the old man's heart beating beneath the floorboards.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    11 views9 pages

    10 The Tell-Tale Heart Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Umashankar S
    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author famous for his tales of mystery and horror. Some of his most well known works include "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which introduced the modern detective story. "The Tell-Tale Heart" follows an unnamed narrator who insists they are sane after killing an old man, but is ultimately driven mad by the sound of the old man's heart beating beneath the floorboards.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 9

    Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

    • American short-story writer, poet,


    critic, and editor
    • One of the first & greatest
    practitioners of the short-story form
    in America
    • Famous for his cultivation of mystery
    and the macabre
    • His tale “The Murders in the Rue
    Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern
    detective story The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
    by
    • The atmosphere in his tales of horror Edgar Allan Poe An Analysis
    is unrivaled in American fiction
    4 components of short story:

    Plot
    Setting
    Character(s)
    Theme
    Plot
    • Narrator speaks to an interlocutor
    • Insists that s/he is sane
    • Claims the disease sharpened, not blunted his/her senses
    • Narrates the tale of how the old man with whom s/he lived never
    wronged him/her
    • Somehow the cloudy, pale blue eyes of the old man incited madness in
    the narrator
    • Whenever the old man looks at him/her, his/her blood turns cold
    • So the narrator vows to kill the old man and get rid of the eye
    Plot Contd.
    • Narrator shines his lamp on the old man’s eye
    • Immediately becomes furious at the damned spot
    • Hears the beating of a heart so loud that fears the neighbours will hear it
    • Violently murders the old man
    • Continues to hear the heartbeat of the dead man
    • Dismembers the corpse & hides body parts
    • On neighbour’s complaint police come to investigate
    • Offers excuse for the shriek & makes them search
    • Police satisfied but do not leave
    • Heartbeat sound resumes; narrator admits crime
    Setting
    Spatial Setting: The story opens in an undisclosed locale, possibly a prison, when the narrator
    tells readers that he is not mad―To defend his sanity, he tells a story which he believes will
    prove him sound of mind―His story is set in a house occupied by the narrator and an old man

    Temporal Setting: The time of the events in the story is probably the early 1840's, when Poe
    wrote the story―The action in the narrator's story takes place over 8 days

    Characters
    The Narrator
    The Old Man
    The Neighbour
    Three Policemen
    The Narrator
    • Deranged, unnamed person
    • Tries to convince the interlocutor/reader that s/he is sane―highly unreliable
    • Gender is not identified
    • Character exhibits male characteristics:
    1) Tendency to commit violent acts
    2) Physical strength―drags the old man onto the floor and pulls the bed on top of
    him, then tears up floorboards and deposits the body between joists
    3) Performs a man's chore by bringing chairs into the old man's bedroom―if the
    narrator were a woman, the policemen probably would have fetched the chairs,
    but they did not

    Three Policemen
    Officers who search the narrator's house after
    a neighbor reports hearing a shriek
    Actively engage with the narrator
    Dutiful, polite, experienced
    The Old Man The Neighbour
    Unnamed Unnamed
    Seemingly harmless elder Gender not specified
    Has a hideous "evil eye” Hears a shriek coming from the house of the
    “Vulture eye” unnerves the narrator narrator and the old man
    Narrator’s action scares the old man Reports it to the police
    Type of Work

    Based on the artistic and emotional effects produced by the story:

    • Horror
    • Psychological thriller

    Point of View
    • The story is told in first-person point of view by an unreliable narrator
    • As in many of his other short stories, Poe does not name the narrator
    • A possible explanation for this is that the unnamed narrator becomes every
    human being, thereby enhancing the universality of the short story
    • In other words, the narrator represents anyone who has ever acted
    perversely or impulsively–and then had to pay for his deed
    Figures of Speech
    Literary devices: non-literal use of words and
    phrases: used for rhetorical and vivid effect in
    narration

    Anaphora
    Personification
    Simile
    Alliteration
    Irony
    Anaphora
    Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at
    the beginning of a clause or another group of words or a sentence. It
    imparts emphasis and balance.

    I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many
    things in hell.
    With what caution–with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I
    went to work!
    He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had
    been saying to himself, "It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is
    only a mouse crossing the floor," or, "It is merely a cricket which has
    made a single chirp."
    There was nothing to wash out–no stain of any kind–no blood-spot
    whatever.
    They heard!–they suspected!–they KNEW!–they were making a
    mockery of my horror!
    Personification
    Attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects,
    or abstract notions
    “Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him
    and enveloped the victim.”
    [Here, Death is a person.]

    Simile
    Alliteration
    The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent
    or closely connected words

    • Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the
    whole story.

    • It is the beating of his hideous heart!

    Irony
    Prose Beats Like a Heart
    Rhythm of heartbeat replicated in language:

    Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! – no, no? They heard! –
    they suspected! – they KNEW! – they were making a mockery of my
    horror! – this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this
    agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those
    hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! – and now –
    again – hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! – "Villains!" I shrieked,
    "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here!
    – it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

    Significance of the Title


    • Tell-Tale
    • Revealing/indicating/betraying something
    • An object that gives a visual indication of the presence of something
    • Revelation of secrets, wrongdoings
    • The Tell-Tale Heart

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