The Tell-Tale Heart

The short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe was published in 1843 and is written in first-person from a crazy man who tells the reader how he kills the old man because of his eye.

At first, the first-person-narrator says he isn’t mad that’s why he can tell the whole story. He begins with how he loves the old man and that the old man never treated him badly, but his vulture blue pale eye scares him and he wants to get rid of it. He compares himself with Madmen and that they could not do the things he does. He comes to the old man seven nights in a row and looks in his room very quiet and slowly so the man doesn’t wake up and every night the eye is closed that’s why he does not kill him. Then in the morning, the I-narrator asks the old man how he slept. In the eight-night, he chuckles about his power of sagacity, that the old man would never dream, that he could open the door and looks at him. Then the old man hears him and moves suddenly. But the I-narrator knows he can’t see him because it is pitch black. When he wants to open the lantern, he makes a noise again and the old man springs up in bed and asks if there’s anyone. After that, the I-narrator doesn’t move for an hour. While he is still, he pities the old man for his fears, he now has. Then he opens one crevice of the lantern so that a ray shines in the old man’s eye. He only sees the eye nothing else. He starts to hear his heartbeat of the man and it grows louder and louder but he keeps not moving. When he thinks the heart should burst by beating so loud, he is scared that the neighbours could hear it. He yells at the old man and jumps into his room. The old man screams one's while the I-narrator pushes him down and pulls the heavy bed over him. He sits down on the bed and is happy. For many minutes he hears the heartbeat until it stops and the old man is dead. Then the I-narrator removes the bed and tries to hear the heartbeat from the old man but he’s dead. The I-narrator thinks that the eye would trouble him no more. He asks the reader if he still thinks he’s mad and tries to proof the opposite when he explains how he dismembers the body and how he hides the parts under the wooden floor. When he is getting finished, it's four o’clock. After some time three police officers knock on the door and he opens suavity. The first person narrator explains to the officers that he had shrieked in a dream while he is taking care of the old man’s house while he is absent. He brings them inside to relax from their hard work and then they’re satisfied. In the same way, the I-narrator starts to hear a ringing in his ear, he gets pale and his headaches. While they chat, he realises that the noise isn’t in his ears, whereas the noise increases. He stands up and paced the floor to and fro. He starts to rave and swear and the officers start to smile. The I-narrator realises that they know it. He feels he has to scream or die. At last, he admits the deed while he removes the planks and says that the hideous heartbeats. There the short story ends.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tale-Tell Heart” published in 1843, he describes how the Inarrator kills an old man and how he confesses his deed. At first, the lyrical me asks the reader “How, then, am I mad?” (Line 5) With this rhetorical question, the author is involved in the story and can later feel more the suspense. Furthermore, the reader deals with the question if the I-narrator is really mad or the things that will happen are extraordinary. When the author describes the eye of the old man, he uses the metaphor “my blood ran cold” to visualise the protagonist’s feelings. In the third section, the I-narrator starts to describe how he observes the old man in the seven nights. In this process and later on, the author makes use of dashes to mark things and stop the reader's flow. When he uses the hyperbole “for another hour I did not move” inline 51, the author underlines the fact that they didn’t move for a long time. There are two possibilities: one, the two men didn’t move really not for an hour and they would be very strange or two, the situation feels for the protagonists like an hour but in reality, it wasn’t. In general, the author did not make clear if the I-narrator is mad or the things happened for real. The reader has the opportunity to choose which possibility he thinks is real. When the author makes use of similes like “a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” (line 85), the reader can better visualise the story in his mind and it feels more real. At last, when the protagonist has hidden his deed perfectly so no one could find out, he starts to hear the old man’s heart, he thinks and it grows louder and louder. I think that could be a metaphor for his guilty conscience. Although he hates the old man’s vulture eye, maybe he feels guilty of killing an innocent man. That’s why he imagines he hears his heartbeat. In the end, the story of Edgar Allan Poe can remind us to act more considered.

1. His mother died when he was three-years-old and his father went away
2. He was forested by the Allen family
3. Edgar introduced the detective genre 1841
4. He married his 13-years-old cousin with 27
5. After his spouse died he became an alcoholic
6. At his funeral were only seven people
7. 160 years later he got a proper ceremony
8. An NFL team name came from his poem “The Raven”
9. His death stays a mystery

Dear Linus,
I hope you had good and sunny holidays in Canada because my time with my mum was amazing.

I know you don’t have much time. That’s why I got directly to the point. You asked me for more information about Edgar Allan Poe and I found a German article in “Der Spiegel” in the fourth edition of 2009 which is called “Der Anglist und Biograf Hans-Dieter Gelfert, 72, über Edgar Allan Poe und die Schönheit des Schreckens”. In the interview, Gelfert says Poe was a poet, storyteller, critic and philosopher and during the master of Morbid his favourite topic was the death of beautiful women. In America, he is not so famous because he accept slavery and isn’t against it, doesn’t like the democracy, is an alcoholic and married a 13-years-old. “Der Spiegel” wrote that Poe likes the irrational and the abyss of the soul but in contrast the detective Dupin solves the cases with extreme rational analyses. At last, Gelfert responded to “Der Spiegel” that Poe likes to highlight the beauty and the beauty of horror.

I think these are the important facts from this article about Edgar Allan Poe. If you want more information, you could translate some articles or write me another email. I would like to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,
Jakob