Symbolism and Unreliable Narration in The Tell-Tale Heart

Introduction: Gothic Atmosphere and Unreliable Narration

Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" may be the finest example of gothic fiction ever written. In it, Poe uses every aspect of storytelling to contribute to the story's atmospheric intensity, resulting in a gothic feeling that permeates every detail. When the story opens, one realizes that Poe's narrative technique — having a first-person narrator tell the story — contributes enormously to its gothic nature. The narrator quickly reveals himself to be unreliable, perhaps even mentally ill, which makes it difficult to discern the true character of anyone in the story.

The narrator paints himself as an unsympathetic figure, capable of gleeful murder yet also claiming to feel remorse for his actions. That scenario initially seems to lead only to the conclusion that the narrator must be insane, but when one examines the possible interpretations of the story's symbolism, the narrator's actions may seem more reasonable. Poe's use of symbolism is remarkable — not only because the images he chooses are so powerful, but also because they are highly ambiguous, leaving the story open to individual interpretation. Different readers can therefore come away with very different themes. Mortality and compulsion are clearly two of those themes, but whether or not the reader believes the narrator is mad shapes all the other themes the story raises.

The Narrator's Sanity and the Question of Back-Story

In the story's opening lines, the narrator says, "True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" (Poe). These are his first words, immediately signaling to the audience that he is suspected of being mad. The reader becomes wary of him as a reliable source at once, since anyone who argues so insistently that he is not insane tends to appear insane by that very insistence.

The narrator's self-proclaimed behavior makes him seem further suspect. He has decided to kill an old man — not out of any ill will or malice — but because he finds the old man's eye deeply disturbing. His descriptions of how the eye affects him suggest a kind of schizoaffective disorder: he believes the eye possesses powers beyond those of a normal eye and seems to attribute those enhanced powers to the eye's apparent disease, revealed by its cloudy appearance. Even if not technically insane, the narrator does not appear rational. That judgment, however, rests on the narrator's own claim that the old man has done him no wrong — and the audience knows the narrator is unreliable. What if the old man has, in fact, wronged him?

Consider the possibility that the narrator is not insane at all. The narrator is only irrational if the old man truly has done him no wrong. There are suggestions that The Tell-Tale Heart can be read as an example of Southern Gothic writing. If the narrator is a slave and the old man his white master, then the blue eye — which might symbolize whiteness and, by extension, racial oppression — makes the narrator's fixation far less irrational. Moreover, what if the narrator is not male but female, and a slave? Even imagining a consensual or non-consensual sexual relationship between the two at some earlier point in their history, one can easily picture a child born with the same blue eyes. Did the narrator have to surrender a child — or witness a child sold away — because of that tell-tale blue eye? This information is not contained in the story, but the story provides no back-story at all. All the audience knows is that the narrator became fixated on the old man's blue eye and resolved to kill him. Without that context, it is very difficult to judge the narrator's character.

Character and Relationship: What the Text Withholds

Without a back-story, it is equally difficult to know the character of the old man. The audience knows only that he is old, because the narrator says so. For a story written in the 1840s, when life expectancies were considerably shorter, "old" could mean anywhere from one's early forties onward. The white film over his eye suggests cataracts, implying he may be somewhat older than that, but this remains conjecture. Without knowing the narrator's own age, it is impossible to determine the old man's age precisely. There is little else the narrator directly reveals about him.

The audience knows that the old man lives with the narrator, though their relationship is never named. The fact that the narrator refers to him simply as "the old man" — rather than as father, uncle, brother, or any other kinship term — suggests the two do not share a family bond, though it could equally reflect the narrator's way of distancing himself from the murder he has committed. The old man appears to trust the narrator: his wealth, evidenced by the narrator showing the police that his treasures are unharmed, would have given him considerable power in any relationship at that time. Yet the old man also harbors some fear. When the narrator inadvertently wakes him on the eighth night, the old man rises but does not call out — he shares a house with someone on whom he presumably relies, yet does not call to that person when frightened in the middle of the night. That silence suggests an underlying anxiety.

Further details hint that the relationship has not been as peaceful as the narrator implies. When a neighbor hears the old man's scream, he contacts the police out of fear that foul play has occurred, rather than rushing next door to help — suggesting that some history of violence between the narrator and the old man may already be known in the neighborhood.