the-tell-tale-heart-analysis.doc

The Tell-Tale Heart Published 1843IABOUT THE AUTHOREdgarPoewasbornon January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of indigent actors. At age three, when his parents died, Poe was taken in by John Allan, a merchant from Richmond, Virginia. He attended a private school in England where he lived with the Allans between 1815 and 1820. After returning to America, he continued private schooling until 1826, when he entered the University of Virginia. However, he was forced to leave after less than a year because of gambling debts which John Allan refused to pay.Afterquarrelingwith his guardian, Poe went to Boston where, under an assumed name, he joined the army. A few months later, at the age of 18, his first collection of poems, privately financed, was published. In 1829, after the death of John Allans wife, Poe was discharged from the army. He reconciled with his guardian, and received an appointment to West Point. However, because Allen would not support him adequately (and because he did not like military life) he purposely neglected his duties to get himself dismissed from the academy.PoethenwenttoBaltimore, where he resided with his impoverished aunt and her young daughter, Virginia. In 1832 he began his career as a writer of bizarre and romantic short stories by publishing Metzengerstein, a tale about feuding families and supernatural revenge. However, his first real success came the following year when his MS. Found in a Bottle, an eerie tale about a shipwreck and ghostly seamen, won a $50 prize from a Baltimore newspaper. More importantly, it won him recognition and led to a position as an editor on a monthly magazine published in Richmond.In1836,Poemarriedhis cousin Virginia, who was not quite 14 years old at the time, and in 1837, after the end of his editorship, he and his childbride and her mother moved to Philadelphia. Poe soon published the only novel-length fiction he ever wrote, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, a rambling adventure yarn filled with mutiny at sea, shipwreck, cannibalism, fierce South Sea natives, and a voyage to the South Pole.Between1838and1849, the year he died, Poe was at the center of magazine publishing in America, serving as the editor of several journals and writing reviews, critical articles, stories, and miscellaneous pieces which won him admiration for his critical acumen. His most famous worksincluding gothic horror stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia, detective stories, such as Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, and tales of obsession such as The Black Cat and The Tell-Tale Heartall were published during this period. He also earned great fame and wide acclaim with poems such as The Raven.IIOVERVIEWTheTell-TaleHeart is one of a number of Poe stories that focus on an obsessed protagonist/narrator. Indeed, what holds the story together and holds the attention of the reader is the single-minded voice of the madman who, even as he denies his madness, tells a story that confirms it. Poes use of a first-person narrator obsessively recounting a past event is an important element in his contribution to the short story form as a highly unified aesthetic entity.Poestheorythatevery element in a short prose story should contribute to its overall effect is exemplified by the fact that the protagonist/narrator is obsessively concerned with his irrational desire to kill the old man because of the old mans eye and by his rational method of proceeding. Poes stories are often characterized by a psychological mania held in check by the rational control of the narrative structure of the story itself. The narrator insists that his logical plot to kill the old man and the calm way he tells the story are evidence of his sanity. This reflects Poes primary narrative method.IIISETTINGAsisusuallythecase with first-person narratives, there are multiple settings to the story. The action of the recounted tale takes place in the house the narrator shares with the old man. At the same time, the narrator is telling the story from either a prison or an insane asylum where he has been incarcerated. But even more importantly, the setting is actually inside the obsessed mind of the narrator himself, for the crucial climactic event of the storyhis hearing the beating of the dead mans hearttake place solely within his own tortured imagination.IVTHEMES AND CHARACTERSAlthoughtherearetwo characters involved in the storyan old man and the younger man who lives with himit is really about a single character. An examination of the nature of the narrators obsession shows how Poe sets up this story about a split psyche. The narrator insists that he loves the old man, has no personal animosity toward him, does not want his money, and has not been injured by him. Instead, he says he wishes to kill the old man because of his eye! Although there is no way to understand this obsession, the reader must determine the method and meaning of the madness. For Poe, there is no such thing as meaningless madness in fiction.Tounderstandwhatthe old mans eye means to the narrator, it is necessary to examine the relevance of other themes and ideas. Besides the theme of the eye, there are two primary motifs: the idea of time, and the identification of the narrator with the old man. The narrator says at various points in the story that he knows what the old man is feeling as he lies alone in bed, for he himself has felt the same things. He says the moan the old man makes does not come from pain or grief, but from mortal terror that arises from the bottom of the soul overcharged with awe. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo, the terror that distracted me.Thenarratorsownterror and awe is related to his obsession with time. He associates the central image of the beating of the heart with the beating of a clock; he says the old man listens, just as he has done, to the death watches (a kind of beetle that makes a ticking sound) in the wall; he emphasizes how time slows down and almost stops as he sticks his head into the old mans room. To comprehend the meaning of time for the narrator, we must consider the significance of the title and ask: what tale does the heart tell? Although at the end of the story, the beating heart beneath the floor gives the murderer away, more generally, every heart tells the tale of passing timeeach beat bringing one closer to inevitable death.Thenarratorsstrong identification with the old man and his obsession with the eye, suggests that the narrator really wishes to destroy the I, that is, himself. The only way to defeat time is to destroy that which time would inevitability destroy, that is, the self. But to save the self by destroying the self is a paradox that the narrator cannot overcome. Indeed, by destroying the old mans eye, the narrator indirectly destroys himself in the end by exposing himself as the murderer.VLITERARY QUALITIESTheTell-TaleHeart, like many of Poes stories, is deceptively simple at first reading. One might easily dismiss it as a story about a crazy murderer who kills without motivation. However, this would underestimate both Poes idea of artistic control and his concern with the deepest urges of the human heart. To read The Tell-Tale Heart meaningfully, one must take Poes fictional theory seriously and attempt to understand the relevance of all the details of the story. This transforms the temporal narrative flow of the story into a meaningful pattern which makes sense of what at first seems to make no sense.ReadingTheTell-Tale Heart is like trying to solve a mystery story; in this case, the mystery is the motivation of the killer. The key to motivation in a Poe story is his use of a central idea or effect to hold the story together. As a result, everything coheres around this effect and radiates from it. The core of the story is like an obsession that can be identified by the principle of repetition, since those obsessed return again and again to the core of their obsession. Thus, the reader must be alert to repetitions in the story, references to single-minded motifs or themes. These repeated details are the clues to the mystery; repetition is the principle by which the reader makes a distinction between relevant and irrelevant details. The Tell-Tale Heart is a classic example of Poes method.VISOCIAL SENSITIVITYPoeisunconcernedwith the broad social issues of his time. His protagonists are, by and large, not social figures. Instead, they seem to live cut off from society, detached from the large world around them and either content to, or doomed to, live alone. It may be that the short story form itself, which Poe is most credited with creating in America, is a form that is less suited to dealing with social issues than it is with solitary people. The novel, which is able to place characters within a realistic external world, is more open to the depiction of social issues than the short story, which usually focuses on one or two characters confronting psychological and metaphysical issues.VIITOPICS FOR DISCUSSION1.Thenarratorinsists from the very beginning of the story that he is not insane. What characteristics does he say prove his sanity? What characteristics suggest his madness instead?2.Lookcarefullyatthe narrators discussion of his motivation for the crime. Why does he assure the reader that he loves the old man and has no reasonable cause to kill him?3.Noticehowcautiously the narrator sets up the murder of the old man? How does he do this? Why does he take so long before killing him?4.Noticeallthoseplaces in the story when the narrator identifies with the old man. Discuss the nature of this identification.5.Discussallthereferences to time in the storywatches, clocks, time passing, etc. Why is the narrator so concerned with time?6.Noticethenarrators insistence that what is mistaken for madness is actually an over-acuteness of the senses. What sense is particularly acute? What relevance does this have in the story?7.Whenthepolicecall to investigate, why does the narrator invite them in and ask them to stay for a while? What does this reveal about his personality?8.Ifthisisnotasupernatural story which actually presents the beating of a dead mans heart, then what makes the narrator finally confess? Explain.VIIIIDEAS FOR REPORTS AND PAPERS1.Althoughthisisa story of madness, for Poe there is no such thing as meaningless madness. Write a discussion of the nature of madness in the story.2.Poeinsistedthatevery detail in a short story should relate to its central effect and thus contribute to a unified story. What unifies this story? What central effect holds it together? How can you tell the difference between those details that are meaningful and those that are not?3.Poeisoftenconcerned with the theme of time and mortality, that is, how human beings are trapped in time and thus doomed to death. Explain how this story reflects this common Poe theme.4.LookatotherPoestories which focus on an obsessed, seemingly mad, narrator, such as The Black Cat, The Imp of the Perverse, and The Cask of Amontillado. What characteristics do the narrators in these stories share?IXRELATED TITLES AND ADAPTATIONSTheTell-TaleHeart is one of a group of Poe stories that deal with obsession and madness. The central and most explicit of these stories is The Imp of the Perverse (1845), a combination of story and essay in which a Poe narrator discusses and illustrates how humans often persist in some act or behavior for the very fact that they should not. Although the story not