The Mad Narrator, Research Paper Example

Edgar Allan Poe’s “the Tell-Tale Heart”

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” first published in James Russell Lowell’s Pioneer magazine in January of 1843, there are many indications, some quite obvious and others buried deep within the text, that the unidentified narrator (perhaps Poe himself) is quite mad. In other words, this unknown narrator who tells the tale in first person narrative style is mentally unbalanced and displays many of the traits that psychologists have deemed as symptoms of a deeply disturbed mind.

In the first paragraph of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator admits to the reader that he is nervous, “very, very, dreadfully nervous” and then in a roundabout way asks the reader “why will you say that I am mad?” He then refers to this alleged madness as a disease that has sharpened his senses, “not destroyed, not dulled them” (Baym, 702), especially his sense of hearing which plays an integral role later on as the story progresses. Obviously, the narrator does not believe that he is mad and attempts to prove it by calmly telling the whole story to the reader.

This is supported by Stanley Appelbaum who declares that “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a tale of psychology, due to the “frenetic diction of the narrator and his repeated pleas to the reader” concerning his alleged madness which only “reinforces the suspicion that he is mentally ill” (“Literature Annotations”). One important clue in the first paragraph that demonstrates the madness of the narrator is when he admits that he can hear “many things in Hell” (Baym, 702) which indicates mental problems associated with schizophrenia, such as hearing disembodied voices calling out to do harm to oneself or someone else, in this case, the “old man.”

The narrator then relates the source of his madness, being the eye of an unidentified old man. “One of his eyes,” admits the narrator, “resembled that of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it” which makes the narrator’s blood run cold whenever it falls upon him. Once again, this admission by the narrator indicates that he is afflicted by some kind of mental aberration.

As Phillip Lindsay points out in his 1953 biography on Edgar Allan Poe, the unknown narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a neurotic who suffers from “inexplicable storms” in his mind that slowly drive him mad. However, these fits of madness “gradually unfolds within the narrator until they drive him over the edge of sanity” and into a “phantom haunted madness,” complete with demoniacal voices telling him that the “vulture eye” of the “old man” is the cause of his madness and needs to be expunged (357).

Just after admitting his mad fascination with the old man’s “vulture eye,” the narrator speaks directly to the reader by inferring that “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing” (Baym, 702), an indication that the narrator does not consider himself to be mad. He then begins to brag a bit by relating that during the whole week before he murdered the old man because of his “vulture eye,” he proceeded to plan out his murder scheme (premeditated in fact) with great caution and foresight, taking into account everything that could possibly go wrong before, during, and after the crime.

After describing how he spied on the old man while he slept in his bed, the narrator directly asks the reader, “Would a madman have been so wise as this?” (Baym,703) in relation to sneaking into the old man’s bed chamber without being heard or waking the old man up. However, because the old man is asleep, the narrator finds it impossible to set about murdering him, due to his “vulture eye” being closed. As the narrator puts it, “It was not the old man who vexed me, it was his Evil Eye” (Baym, 703).

It is interesting to note that the madness of the narrator has nothing to do with the old man himself, meaning that the old man apparently treated the narrator (possibly a servant, for he mentions that he had no desire for the old man’s riches) with kindness and respect. In effect, it is the old man’s “vulture eye” that is slowly driving the narrator mad. One good indication of his madness is that he never tells the reader exactly why the old man’s “vulture eye” is driving him insane, possibly because he himself does not know.

After murdering the old man in his bed, the narrator proceeds to dismember his corpse and places the body under the floorboards of his bedroom. But now, guilt takes over, and the narrator’s madness increases through the beating of the old man’s heart, even though he is “stone dead” (Baym, 704). This raises an important question–if the narrator is truly mad, then why would he feel guilty over murdering the old man? Here we have a perfect example of Poe’s use of psychological terror that is both internal or in the twisted mind of the narrator, and external (Appelbaum, “Literature Annotations”) via Poe’s imagery of dismemberment and concealment.

In the end, the narrator confesses his crime to the police and proceeds to remove the old man’s heart from under the floor. He cries out “Here–here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Baym, 705), the heart of the old man still living, at least in the mind of the narrator. Poe does not provide the reader with any information on what happened to the narrator after his confession. Undoubtedly, he ended up in an insane asylum.

As one of Poe’s greatest terror-filled stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of the earliest American short stories to utilize human psychology as a way of maintaining tension and suspense and to show the reader that madness is often not what it appears to be. In essence, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is “not just a masterful portrait of madness” but is also a great example “of how guilt can make an already crazed man even crazier” (Applebaum, “Literature Annotations”).

Bibliography

Appelbaum, Stanley. “Literature Annotations: The Tell-Tale Heart.” Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. 2004. Retrieved 5 April 2012 from http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12295

Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 7th edition: Vol. 1: Beginnings to 1865. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007, 702-705.

Lindsay, Phillip. The Haunted Man: A Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe. London: Hutchinson Publishers, Stratford Place, 1953.