Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, he illustrates how ignored guilt and remorse cause anguish for the individual experiencing the guilt. Poe’s narrator and antagonist experiences guilt and anguish through the sense of sound. The senses of sight and sound push the antagonist into committing murder.
Poe’s antagonist admits that he is a “nervous” individual. He admits this is an illness and that his illness heightens his senses, particularly “the sense of hearing”. It is ironic that the narrator admits the old man has never wronged or insulted him yet the narrator feels compelled to kill the old man due to the old man’s filmy eye. The antagonist feels terror whenever the old man’s “Evil Eye” gazes upon him. Feelings of terror play a major role in The Tell-Tale Heart.
When the old man hears the narrator sneaking into his room, the old man experiences terror. It is so dark that the old man cannot see. The antagonist makes no more noise so the old man does not know whether anyone is actually in his room or if the old man just heard a noise from outside. The narrator believes the old man can sense his presence in the room.
At this point in the narrative, the sense of sight plays a small role. The antagonist lets a small ray of light shine from the lamp. The “single dim ray” falls directly on the eye that torments the antagonist. The sight of the eye chills the narrator to the bone.
Through the tormented narrator’s heightened senses, he imagines he hears the old man’s heartbeat grow louder and louder. The noise makes the narrator extremely nervous and the narrator believes the old man must be terrified as well. Finally, the senses of terror and sound overwhelm the antagonist and cause him to jump into action. The antagonist yells when he leaps into the room and the old man shrieks in surprise and terror. These yells and shrieks come back to haunt the antagonist later in the narrative.
The antagonist suffocates the old man and finally, the pounding sound of the old man’s heart stops. Once the old man is dead, the narrator hides the old man’s body underneath the floorboards in the old man’s bedroom.
The antagonist does not get to enjoy his newfound escape from the sight of the old man’s eye and the sound of the old man’s heart. As soon as the antagonist finishes hiding the body, the police arrive at the house. A neighbor had heard “a shriek”, suspected “foul play”, and called the police. Once again, the sense of sound betrays the antagonist.
At first, the narrator is confident and calm. Then in the sick narrator’s mind, he imagines he can hear the old man’s beating heart. The sound gets louder and louder. The narrator is certain the police will hear this noise so the narrator speaks more loudly in an effort to cover up the sound. In reality, the police do not hear the noise. It is just the narrator’s guilt and sick mind causing him trouble. The narrator could have gotten away with murder but finally the sound of the beating heart overwhelms him and he confesses to the murder and shows the police where the body is hidden.
Through imagined sights and sounds, the narrator is tormented into committing murder. The consequences of his actions overwhelm his senses and cause him anguish and guilt. The sounds the narrator imagines cause him to betray himself and confess to the murder. The murderer can only obtain relief from his anguish by confessing.
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Tell-Tale Heart. Literature.org. (n.d.). (n.p.) Web. 7 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html>.
