Literary Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example

Cameron Gray Mary Larson 1420 Composition II 20 April Poe: Short Stories with Long Lasting Impacts. The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe is most famous as the master of the short story form, especially tales of misfortune, murder, and mystery. Twisted plots, horrendous and gruesome crimes, tormented characters are among signature elements of Poe’s works. The Tell-Tale Heart is a good example of author’s craft in creating suspense and dramatic effect in a short literary form. The Tell-Tale Heart is a short horror story by E.A. Poe that is told from the first person perspective and describes the murder of an old man. The main character plots the crime because he (supposing the narrator is male) is irritated by the old man’s “evil eye”. The narrator kills the old man in his sleep, dismembers the body and hides the corpse parts under the floorboards. The main character is not suspected until he confesses the murder to the police believing everyone can hear the beating of the dead man’s heart from under the floor. The Tell-Tale Heart is not a confession but an apology. The murderer tries to prove that the hideous crime, no mater how irrational it might seem to the readers, was planned and carried out in the calculated and premeditated manner. The narrator wants to convince the readers that he was conscious of his motives, actions, and intentions. What is more, he stresses that there was no trace of permanent or temporary mental disorder, let alone insanity. However, the choice of the point of view, tone and mood of the Tell-Tale Heart allowed Poe to create the opposite effect and convince the readers that the story is an account of a madman. The psychological effect of the first-person narrative, the tone and symbolism let Poe enhance the gruesome effect of the story. The point of view chosen by Poe also makes readers feel as if the insane narrator addresses every reader personally. A vide range of stylistic devices is employed to make the story frightening from the very beginning. “TRUE! – nervous -very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe 5). In the opening line Poe chooses the mode of narration that determines the structure of the whole story. The Tell-Tale Heart is a first person narrative where the main character directly participates in the events described. First-person accounts can be seen as unreliable by the readers. On the one hand, central actors, who are also the retrospective tellers, are unlikely to tell objective truth either because they choose to do so or because they are not familiar with the wider perspective of events. On the other hand, first-person narrative can reveal more about the central actor than third-person account. Literary critics suggest that trying to preserve the form of the story narrator can involuntarily become involved in self-revelation. It happens because the boundary between the action taking place in the story and the way the author chooses to tell the story is blurred (Auerbach 8). Poe takes the two considerations into account when he chooses the point of view in the Tell-Tale Heart. Firstly, the emotional claim of telling the truth made by the narrator in the opening line serves two purposes. It establishes close emotional contact with the readers and urges them to cast aside doubts concerning first-person narrative. The readers are left with the impression that this story might be true and are looking forward to getting more facts to prove its truthfulness. The unreliable narrator’s point of view also helps to create the effect of detachment when the account of the crime is given. With the help of first-person narrative Poe creates a character who tries to persuade and guide the reader to particular end (Levine 29). Poe’s strategy if therefore to put various figures of speech and appeals into the narrator’s explanations of the horrible crimes and then step back allowing the narrator to fail in the attempts at persuasion (Zimmerman 28). The writer’s technique creates irony that keeps the readers alert. However, the choice of the first-person narrative plays a trick on the main character because the way the he tells his story reveals more than he intended. The main narrator calls to readers: “Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story” (Poe 3). The phrase marks the tight connection between “you” and “I” in the story and introduces the double chronological narrative mode of the Tell-Tale Heart. As the story unfolds both the readers and the main character take on several roles: “I” can become a nervous narrator and “you” denote listeners, “I” may denote the participant of the actions (murderer) and “you” are involved as the witnesses of the crime. The main character wants to prove the readers that he is sane and that intention underlines his point of view. Early in the story the narrator takes on the imaginary role of a sane but slightly nervous person who tells a story within a story to create the effect of reality. The irony in the use of first-person narrative by the main character of the Tell-Tale Heart lies in the fact that he appears to employ the language and rhetoric of reason to justify unreasonable actions. The writer’s purpose is to create the effect of ironic detachment when the readers understand the discrepancy between the narrator’s irrational actions or motives and their logical arguments (Zimmerman 29). Giving the account of events the narrators makes the impression of the person living in two time plans, the time of telling the story and the time of the murder, simultaneously. The main character easily switches from the present “very dreadfully nervous I had been and am”, “I can tell you” to the past “the whole week”, “every night, about midnight”, “this I did for seven long nights” (Poe 10). Towards the end of the story the past and the present collide in the main character’s mind: “this I thought, and this I think” and reveal narrator’s split personality (Poe 13). The passage of time in the story is shown from the narrator’s point of view: “A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine”, “long time”, “many minutes” (Poe 10). It creates the impression of insanity as soon as the reader realizes that time is both unbearably slow and very fast. The passage of time with the focus on ticking and beating echoes the symbol of heart and contributes to the gloomy mood and tone of the story. The prevailing tone of the story is emotional, thrilling and scary, because the narrator describes all his feelings in an extremely vivid way. At the beginning of the story the narrator claims to be calm and perfectly sane “how calmly I can tell you the whole story”. However, the tone quickly changes into nervous and emotional outbursts. The syntax of the story reveals the main character’s psychological state. Poe uses short, elliptical constructions and a lot of exclamatory and interrogative sentences. The narrator is either begging for readers’ attention or talking to himself: “oh, no!”, “louder every moment! -do you mark me well?”, “Almighty God! - no, no! They heard! - they suspected! - they knew!” (Poe 12). Writer deliberately uses this technique because it reveals narrator’s twisted logic and nervousness rooted in his insanity, although he may claim otherwise. Poe uses the stylistic devices of repetition to enhance the frightening tone of the story and make readers doubt narrator’s sanity: “Object there was none. Passion there was none”, “slowly-very, very slowly”, “so cautiously-cautiously”, “all in vain. All in vain”, “it was open-wide, wide open” (Poe 11). Symbolism also plays crucial role in psychological unraveling of murderer’s mind in the Tell-Tale Heart. The main symbols of the story are those of clock, heart, and eye. Clock symbolizes the gap between the insane narrator’s perception and real world, course of events in his mind and in real life. The main character lives according to the clock in his heart and old man’s heart. In his perception clock is closely associated with life and death. It is manifested in the use of vocabulary: “hearkening to the death watches in the wall”, “the dead hour of the night” (Poe 9). At night, especially at midnight, the narrator makes the transition from living according to his own time into real world or more precisely tries to subordinate the real time by stopping the ‘clock’ in old man’s heart: “ The old man’s hour had come!” (Poe 9). The symbols of objective time and subjective time, clock and person’s beating heart that sustains one’s life are inseparable for the narrator “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” (Poe 13). Taking old man’s life the madman was triumphant as it seemed to him that he was in control of the flow of time “ when I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock -still dark as midnight” (Poe 10). For a while time appears to stand still or comply with the narrator’s intentions. However, the clock renews its activity, “the bell sounded the hour”, and the narrator has once again to confront the real world “there came a knocking at the street door” (Poe 11). At first the narrator’s conversation with the police seemed to proceed smoothly. However, the sound of the dead man’s beating heart, the ‘clock’ of old man’s life starts haunting the main character leading to his breakdown: I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound - much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.” (Poe 12) Thus the narrator fails to take control of the time in his head, let alone the time in the real world, and spirals into insanity. The narrator devotes a whole paragraph to the description of the rising sound of the heart of his victim, using extended gradation. The louder was the sound, the crazier murderer felt. Short, exclamatory and interrogative sentences with epithets, describing state and parallel constructions are used to show the wild state of the character “Oh what could I do? I foamed – I raved – I swore” (Poe 13) The symbol of the eye is crucial for the story because obsession with old man’s eye is presented as the justification of the narrator’s crime: Object there was none. Passion there was none. 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! One of his eyes resembled that 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 for ever. (Poe 6) The “Vulture Eye” symbolizes the oppression and fear. The narrator sees the only way to tranquility in destroying the eye by taking the old man’s life. Symbol of the eye is closely connected with that of clock and more broadly time. Scholars suggest that the eye vexed the narrator because it resembled the eye of the vulture, the creature associated with death. As a result, the eye of the old man as well as the sound of his beating heart may remind the main character of the passing of time and death (Gargano 379). Poe makes use of homophones ‘eye’ and ‘I’ to suggest, that in narrator’s mind getting rid of the eye was crucial for his self-preservation. In the murderer’s perception the ‘Evil Eye’ is linked to the symbols of time. Thus the destruction of the eye would allow the main character to avoid death or the thoughts of time going by. The Tell-Tale Heart is a story of uncertainty, not knowing what is real and what is not. The confusion of sensation results in the over-acuteness of senses. Through the choice of the first-person narrative Poe is able to reveal the main character’s twisted logic and convince the readers of the protagonist’s insanity. Extreme nervousness is revealed in the use of exclamation and elliptic sentences, the gloomy tone in enhanced through the use of repetition. As the readers become more and more familiar with the motivation and possible justification of the narrator’s crime, the dramatic impact of the short story is intensified. As the story unfolds the narrator makes several attempts to change the point of view. He goes from “I - the criminal” to “I – the nervous storyteller” to detach himself from the events of the story inviting the readers to become witnesses and accomplices. In the story close connection between the choice of language, tone, symbolism and the mental state of the narrator is traced. Vivid descriptions of visual and aural perception of the narrator, which are reflected in the story’ symbolism, amplify the dramatic effect. In the circumstances the pulsation of the heart becomes the only tangible component of the narrative giving the pulsation to the whole text and leading to the revelation. The story ends abruptly intensifying the impression of the account of a madman. Works Cited Auerbach, Jonathan. The Romance of Failure: First-person Fictions of Poe, Hawthorne, and James. NY: Oxford UP, 1989. Print. Gargano, James W. ‘‘The Theme of Time in ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’’’ Studies in Short Fiction. Vol. V. no. 1. (1967): 378-382. Print. Levine, Stuart. Edgar Poe: seer and craftsman. Deland, Fla.,Everett/Edwards, 1972. Print. Poe, Edgar A. The Tell-Tale Heart. BookSurge Classics, 2004. Print. Zimmerman, Brett. Edgar Allan Poe: Rhetoric and Style. Mcgill Queens Univ Pr., 2005. Print. : Read More