The Tell-Tale Heart Literary Analysis

Introduction and summary
This short story is based on an unidentified narrator who defends his sanity while confessing to a killing of an old man. The motivation for the killing is only the fear he has for the old man’s pale blue eyes. In a detailed narration of his cautions and forethought killing of the old man, the narrator constantly argues he is not mad on account of this measured and cool criminal action, which arguably, are not attributes of the mad. This paper is a literary analysis of the tell-tale heart narration by Poe. The primary theme in the story is guilt and madness, which is clear all through the narration. While the narrator constantly defends his crime and madness, he eventually confesses to the crime.
The unnamed narrator begins the story with a direct address to the reader and acknowledges that he is nervous and argues that he is not mad. He then says that the story he is going to tell is an evidence of his sanity, but the juxtaposition is that, while he is doing so, he confesses to his crime of murder. His motivation to kill the old man was not passion or money, as it is the case commonly, but for the fear of the old man’s “evil eye” (Poe). In his argument, he insists that his caution, forethought, measured actions, and cool during the killing is the qualification for his sanity. This argument is backed, at least to the narrators point of view, by the fact that, such ‘planning’ would not be done by a mad person.
After several nights of sneaking into the old man’s apartment and observing him in his sleep, he at a given time randomly decides that it was time to kill the old man. On the eighth night, the old man wakes up as the narrator is sneaking into the room. The narrator then stalks the old man as he is unable to go back to sleep due to being frightened (Leenaars, 221). The narrator is able to understand the old man’s fear for he too was experiencing the same terrors of the night and the silence, but a dull pounding interrupts this silence and to avoid it being heard by the neighbors, the narrator opts to kill the old man (Poe). He then dismembers the old man’s body and hides the body pieces under the floor.
Just as he is nearly done, at about four am, the police knock at the door responding to a call by a neighbor who had heard the old man shriek. The narrator takes caution not to expose himself and thus acts normal, is chatty, and throws in a lie that the old man had traveled out of the country (Poe). He leads the police officers into the house and the height of it, takes them into the old man’s bedroom offering them seats and talk at the scene of the crime. So far, his trick seems to be successful but a low thumping sound that he likens to that of the old man’s heart pushes him to confess of his crime and exposes the old man’s remains.
Analysis
In The tell-tale heart, the author has created a classic example of an unreliable narrator who cannot be trusted to tell the objective truth of events. Right from the first paragraph, the reader is able to grasp this aspect of unreliability when the narrator argues and insists that he is sane and that, his nervousness and state of oversensitivity is what’s being misunderstood for madness, for example, his hearing sensitivity. Soon as the narrator is done with this declaration of being sane, he presents to the reader an account that completely guides the declaration into doubt as it bears clear accounts with clear logical inadequacies that can only be explained by madness. In this short story, it can from a general viewpoint be noted that, the author is seeking to bring to the reader’s attention the state of mind for the psychotic narrator which in comparison to the normal and healthy persons, equates only to the logic of dreams, or rather, nightmares (Leenaars, 227).
So as to convince the reader of the narrators instability, the author employs the use of vocabulary that is seemingly feminine or rather, ironic and jarring so as to evoke a reaction that is out of line with the true intent of the narrator. This rhetoric technique involves the manipulation of words to achieve desired connotations without hiding or spinning the base argument. For example, the narrator says “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work!” This rhetoric technique in the wording is meant to make the reader jubilant of the ‘admirable’ nature and planning the narrator put into the event while in the real sense, the narrator was plotting to kill the old man in his sleep. The use of such words like “wisely,” “caution” and “work” are meant to blur the reader into considering the narrators actions to be of a prudent, clever, and responsible person. This blatant acceptance of his actions however works contrary to his intentions as it serves to enlighten rather than hoodwink the reader.
The narrator claims that one of the attributes for his sanity is his clear thought and sensitivity. It is an irony therefore that, he is detracted and ultimately defeated by a noise which he interpreted as being the beating of his heart. Actually, as a result of the narrator’s unreliability, it is impossible for the reader to know what actually was the source of this “…low, dull, quick sound…” The narrator interprets it as the sound of the old man’s heart, but it is clear that the narrator's inability to understand the sound is an unparalleled lack of awareness for his actions. The fact that he can’t understand his actions – mistaking his own heart's beating to that of the dead man, is a clear indication of the state of his mind, which is obviously contrary to the claim he has propagated all through.
The narrator eventually kills and the old man and this murder is a clear illustration of how he separates the identity of the old man to his physical “evil eye.” While it is clear that the narrator doesn’t kill the old man as an act of vengeance, or for his wealth, from the narrator’s point of view, it was for the fear that the evil eye impacted on him. This to some degree serves to explain why the psychotic will sometime even kill persons whom they love, or are expected to love (Brittain, 198). The narrator considers the eye to be a separate entity from the old man and the desire to remove the eye leads to him murdering the old man. The narrator doesn’t even see this as ending the old man’s life therefore, by dismembering his body, he dispossesses the old man of the basic aspect of humanity. The narrator's perspective of the old man’s body parts not being part of the old man ultimately work against him when he imagines that the old man’s body parts, the heart, are working against him.
All through the story, the narrator argues that he is insane, that the evidence of this is his increased sensitivity, in particular, towards sounds. However, it is the same sense that ultimately betrays him as he proves he is unable to distinguish between imagined and real sounds. This is even clearer in the fact that, even though the narrator claims to hear low sounds of the old man’s heart beat, he cannot hear the old man’s shrieks that causes a neighbor to call the police. Finally, he confesses to the police and figuratively, also to his insanity by referring to the police as “villains.” This indicates his mental inability to distinguish the real identity of the police to that of his villainy, and therefore, the inability to accept the true status of his mind from the beginning.


Works cited
Brittain, Robert P. "The sadistic murderer." Medicine, Science and the Law 10.4 (1970): 198-207. Web.
Leenaars, Antoon A. "Suicide: A multidimensional malaise." Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 26.3 (1996): 221-236. Web.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The tell-tale heart. American Studies at the University of Virginia, 2002. Web.