Edgar Allan Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Book Review Example

The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story composed by Edgar Allen Poe.  It is rather a ghoulish story concerning the murder of an old man who is dismembered and his body buried under floor-boards.  The murder subsequently loses his sanity believing the heart of the old man is still beating under the floorboards.  It talks of the old man having a “Vulture Eye”, the apparent reason for the pre-meditated murder.  The conflict is on the murders insistence of his own sanity but in so doing it becomes “self destructive” as the defence build up the case to his ultimate admission of guilt.  It is a saga of guilt, remorse and the dreadful concept of haunting of the human mind for an act so  reprehensible.  Clearly the murderer is the protagonist at the central theme of this story and  the old man the antagonist by the concept of the “vulture eye” (Benfey 1993).

As the sound of the old mans heartbeat gets louder. The murder becomes more paranoid and believes that others can hear it, including the police officers who are present at the scene of the crime. The illusion and paranoia eventually lead to the murder believing the police know that he is guilty and the murders tortured soul eventually leads him confessing his guilt of the crime. This leads the murder to the evidence and telling the police the whereabouts of the body and instruction to tear up the floor boards.

The plot demonstrates the struggle between imagination and science.  The old man the rationale scientific mind and the narrator the imaginative

Works Cited

Benfey, Christopher. “”Poe and the Unreadable: ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.” In “Poe and the Unreadable: ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, by Christopher Benfey. Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press, 1993.