Literature Analysis of Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

Introduction

This is the story of an individual in first person narration, who tells the story of his calculating murder of an old man for whose care he was responsible (Silverman, 19).

Analysis

This is largely a study in human terror experienced on two levels, both horrifying to behold. First, there is the narrator, the maniac, driven by his compulsive hatred of the “evil eye” to kill a man he says he loved (Hutchisson, 52). He is a case study in madness, tormented by that satanic eye that he simply must destroy. His madness is quite convincing and profoundly disturbing because it seems so capricious and meaningless. Indeed, seldom has the mystery and the horror of mental illness been so vividly portrayed (Burluck, 31). The narrator is driven to self-destruction, though his suicidal urges are objectified in the old man's diseased eye (Irwin, 49).

The other level of terror is that experienced by the old man. His terror is made all the more realistic because it is related from the perspective of his tormentor, the mad narrator, who takes sadistic delight in knowing that the old man is quaking in his bed (Silverman, 20). Given the appearance of three police officers not long after the murder, one is tempted to speculate that the old man knew more than the narrator thought he knew. Perhaps he had conveyed his suspicions to a neighbor, or perhaps the young man has been demented for years, and the old man has been caring for him (Kennedy, 12). If he did suspect the narrator, the terror that the old man felt during the hour before his death must have been excruciating (Kennedy, 13).

The story is replete with double meaning and irony. Fearful that the neighbors would hear the heartbeat growing increasingly ...