The Tell-Tale Heart, Book Review Example

Abstract

The paper discusses and evaluates the hidden literary implications of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. The narrator’s personality is shown as the source of reliable primary evidence about the crime. The beating of the heart symbolizes the unity of the narrator and the victim. The narrator’s confession as the culmination of the story confirms his striving to prove his superiority over officers and to reveal the true motives of the murder.

Introduction

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is one of the most complex and most challenging literary masterpieces. Told through the eyes of an anonymous madman, Poe’s story creates a vision of inner controversy and does not leave the reader a chance to resolve this inner conflict. In reality, however, Poe uses madness to emphasize the dramatic realism of the murder. The madder the narrator looks, the more real the story itself becomes. The madness, which bears a distinct element of sadomasochism, provides the reader with a unique opportunity to travel through the mind of the murderer and to understand the major motives of his cruelty. Apart from the fact that the beating of the heart for Poe signifies the unity and oneness of the murderer with his victim, the moment of confession can be fairly regarded as the culmination of the story, which makes impossible possible and which reveals the true egocentric nature of the human.

True, “nervous, very very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?” (Poe, 1992). What makes the reader believe that the narrator is mad, and if he is, is there any reason to believe that he is not a reliable narrator? The mere insistence of the madman upon the fact that he is not mad, and the pleasure and joy which he obviously experiences while telling his story make a compelling claim about the presence of some kind of psychological disorder which, nevertheless, does not distort the whole picture of the murder, but makes it even more realistic. It is difficult not to agree to Pritchard (2003), who writes that “embedded in the talk is the psychological journey of an egocentric who derives pleasure from cruelty”. Given that the primary aim of the story is to help readers look deeper into the murderer’s soul and to understand the hidden motives of his acts, madness can hardly become an obstacle on one’s way to creating a realistic picture of the murder.

The point in Poe’s (1992) story is in trying to investigate the mental and spiritual processes, which occur in the murderer’s mind after he commits his crime. The writer does not seek to create the most objective picture of the murder, but wants to explore the narrator’s inner world. That is why the madman stands as the most reliable and the primary source of information. “It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night” (Poe, 1992). The narrator is mad to the extent, which makes this murder meaningless and unjustified, but he himself is able to explain and justify his actions, so why not simply trust his words? In this complex structure of sadomasochistic explanations and revelations, the narrator’s confession turns out to be the culmination of the story and its logical end.

Not the murder, but the confession emphasizes the unlimited human egocentrism and shows this confession as the narrator’s desire to show his power, his unlimited sadism, and the pleasure he experienced upon murdering the old man. “Villains! I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here!” (Poe, 1992). This confession, which was neither necessary nor critical, because the officers obviously believed the narrator’s words and the story, was the ultimate scream for recognition and the narrator’s desire to confirm his own superiority over others. This confession and the idea of the heart beating are nothing else but the narrator’s recognition of his the unity and oneness with the victim. This beating of the victim’s heart, which is actually the beating of the narrator’s heart, is something the latter uses to show, that he can feel the victim’s pain, and moreover, that he gets real pleasure from being in this pain (Pritchard, 2003). In general, Poe’s story is designed as an attempt to look beyond the curtains of a madman’s mind, but in no way does this madness make the story less realistic.

Conclusion

Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is told through the eyes of a madman. However, this madness does not make the story unbelievable but, on the contrary, emphasizes its realistic nature. The beating of the heart, which signifies the narrator’s unity with the victim, and his confession as the culmination of the story, are used to confirm the narrator’s superiority over others. They show the murder as one’s striving to use sadomasochism for the sake of satisfying the narrator’s superiority desires.

References

Poe, E.A. (1999). The tell-tale heart. Lityerature.org. Retrieved November 11, 2009 from http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html

Pritchard, H. (2003). Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Explicator, Spring, pp. 144-147.