English
In dissecting Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, there are a few pointers that are give-aways. Gothic expressions are delivered in a bundle of narrations, which is sadistically evil and obvious. The narrator seems to justify his position by saying that he was sane. What was the need for this? In trying to do so, he was only contradicting himself. This perhaps, was the way; court cases took shape during the nineteenth century.
At this point, it would be appropriate to study the social life of the people of America during the period between 1838 and 1844. This was a period known for its notoriety; as many cases where criminals were acquitted, were done so because of their defense declaring their clients to be suffering from insanity. Much before things like this happened, insanity pleas were heard only in the defense of idiots or raving maniacs, but years later, insanity was used as a strategy by defense lawyers to save their clients from punishment.
The Tell-Tale Heart begins with the narrator reflecting to his readers, his true mental condition; he claims that he is not insane:
True! Nervous -- very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses -- not destroyed them.
He then claims that his senses are sharp and perfect, and that he could hear sounds in heaven, Earth and hell! He then reveals his plans or ideas. He says that he’s not sure how these ideas came into his head, but once it entered his head, he had no other option than to kill the old man. He then concludes by saying that he had no enmity with the old man, but it was the old man’s eye that prompted him to murder him. Insanity was a tool used in defense circles in the corridors of law in the nineteenth century. In Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, what is evident is the juxtaposition of the antihero’s characteristic interaction with dramatic irony, and a historically insanity defense controversy. Dan (2008), in Edgar Allan Poe’s Aesthetic Theory, the Insanity Debate, and the Ethically Oriented Dynamics of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ discusses Poe’s dramatic irony “as based on structural unity.” One cannot overlook this in the context of the last sentence, where narrator screams “It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
Written in the nineteenth century, Poe was one of the finest writers of his time. The Tell-Tale Heart is centered on the old man and the caretaker, who is the narrator of the story. In narrating the story, the whole action takes place in the mansion of the old man. The story plays out through eight days, during which, the narrator opens the door of the old man’s bedroom seven consecutive midnights. On the fateful eighth night, the narrator opens the door, contemplates on killing the old man because of his dreaded eye, and then, as the old man opens his eyes to see who was in his room, covers the old man’s face and strangles him to death. He sighs in relief as the dreaded eye closes one last time. He feels for the old man’s heart beat, smothers him to death with a mattress, and dismembers his corpse. This act is immediately followed by a knock on the front door of the house. He quickly hides the corpse under the floor planks in the old man’s room. When the police; called by their neighbour who heard a scream arrive, the caretaker offers them chairs to sit right above the corpse, and then goes to the kitchen to make tea. He manages to answer their queries convincingly, but as they keep looking at him, he suddenly feels defenceless. Added to this was the sudden growing sound of the old man’s heart beat. Unable to control himself any longer, he cries out:
“Villains!” I cried, “Pretend no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the floor boards! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
The first two lines and the last two lines summarize the characterization of the antihero. His actions and words belie the qualities of a sane person. In portraying the antihero as he is, Poe was clearly reflecting on the social injustice of his time, when insanity was prevalent as a defense tool in cases of heinous crimes. As Zimmerman (2001) says, the Tell-Tale Heart is an exemplary example of work which displays several parts of the classical speech; “it begins, as it should, with an exordium or prooemium (introduction), where the first part of the introductory material is the narration, followed by a brief, clear statement of the case, where the narrator knows that this is a principal component of forensic oratory.”
Edgar Allen Poe uses The Tell-Tale Heart to convey to his readers the claustrophobic heinous attitude inherent in the unnamed antihero, who is betrayed by his own insanity. Never before has Poe reflected his seriously influenced neo-Gothic interests than in the characterization of the antagonist in The Tell-Tale Heart. As one of America’s greatest writers, Poe was attracted and influenced by the eighteenth and nineteenth century horror writers, and it comes as no surprise that most of his work was based on horror. As in contemporary writing, writers of the class of Edgar Allen Poe and others were influenced greatly by their surroundings and this can be seen in their work.
Amper (2005), in, Why will you say that he is mad’; a re-examination of Poe’s, Tell-Tale Heart, studied Poe’s background, and says that Poe worked and lived in Philadelphia during a time when lawlessness dominated societal talks, and when issues of insanity echoed through the halls of the judiciary. The nineteenth century was notorious for cases that harboured around insanity and brutality, where criminals were acquitted despite committing major crimes including murder after pleading insanity. Much before things like this happened, insanity pleas were heard only in the defense of idiots or raving maniacs, and this trend was carried forward and used to good effect later on by defenses on the grounds of moral insanity. The entire play takes place within the confines of a room in a mansion, where an old man, looked after by his live-in caretaker, finds one eye of his master, casting a suspicious and piercing gaze at him. The old man hardly leaves his bedroom, and it was the duty of the caretaker to see that his master was well cared for during the day and night. If not for the eye, the narrator perhaps, may not have murdered the old man, whom he said, he liked. Kachur (2008), says “Gothic horror’s association with the unspeakable is nowhere more apparent than in Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, because the narrator himself cannot satisfactorily articulate his motivation for stalking and murdering an apparently kind old man.” The narrator, speaks in the first person, and is supposedly the caretaker.
In the Tell-Tale Heart, as a reader, one sees that the monologue by the accused murderer, protesting vehemently about his sanity rather than his heinous crime, incites provocation and a negative effect (Robinson, 1965). Robinson (1965), on Poe’s ‘Tell-Tale Heart,’ rightly justifies this tone when he observes that the narrator was conniving to defend the crime that he committed, and at the same time, his psychic self was getting the better of his emotions. For little did he realize that his actions were going to get him into trouble, as all his efforts to convince the detectives seemed ineffective to him, as they looked at him suspiciously? He was finally convinced that no matter how convincing he seemed, he was doomed to be arrested for his heinous crime. He was sure that, whatever he did to argue his case, he would be implicated on charges of criminal insanity and murder. The antagonist argues on the basis that his alleged eccentricity as incompatible with systematic action. A typical Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by nature, the narrator, despite this confession, goes on record to say that he managed to execute a murder with rational precision.
Even though he says he killed the old man, he says that he loved him a lot and had no motive to kill him. However, now that he had killed him, he did an excellent job of hiding the body like an expert. In James Cowles Prichard’s book on moral insanity, Prichard says that a person who was insane, while retaining his intellectual faculties, was considered incapable of conducting himself with decency or propriety. This seemed a suitable alibi for those who committed heinous crimes. The antihero was an unassuming person, who had no background to talk about; no history of family or friends. Not surprisingly, public suspicion of deceit became widespread, and trials featuring such defenses hit the headlines in national newspapers. Edgar Allen Poe showed a lot of interest in this, and this reflected in Tell-Tale Heart.
‘If you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for concealment of the body.’
As if this wasn’t enough, he displays his psychotic inner self when has says that he lacked the motivation to commit the crime:
‘Object there were none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man.’
The above clearly indicates the narrator’s psychotic mentality and seems as though he had no control over his action. However, he does reason that he was sane and that he had executed the plot quite professionally, leading to further contriving (Robinson, 1965) , p.369).
Conclusion
In reading Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, his antagonist; the narrator, projects himself as being psychotic but practically normal. He commits the murder of the old man but says that he loved him a lot and had no motive to kill him. What made him murder the old man was his eyes. In trying to support his rationale that he was sane, he asks the readers; “If still you think me mad, you will think no longer when I describe the wise precautions I tool for concealment of the body.” He admits that he had no enmity with the old man, he wasn’t after his gold or property, yet, it was the idea to murder him that haunted and made him do it. His efforts to justify his stance are almost vindicated, till the time he talks about hearing reverberations of the heart of the old man.
Works Cited
Amper, S, (2005), Why Will You Say That He Is Mad? Re-examining The Tell-Tale Heart, Bronx Community College, CUNY Retrieved June 17, 2014, from http://www2.lv.psu.edu/PSA/2005MLA.html
Robinson Arthur, 1965, Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 4, Journal, University of California Press, CA, Retrieved June 17, 2014, from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029- 0564%28196503%2919%3A4%3C369%3AP%22TH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q
Dan, S, (2008), Edgar Allan Poe's Aesthetic Theory, the Insanity Debate, and the Ethically Oriented Dynamics of The Tell-Tale Heart, Nineteenth - Century Literature, Volume 63 (3), p.321-345,436
Zimmerman, B, (2001), Frantic forensic oratory: Poe’s The tell-tale heart, Style, Volume 35(1), p.34-49.
Kachur, R, M, (2008), Buried in the Bedroom: Bearing Witness to Incest in Poe’s "The Tell- Tale Heart, Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, Volume 41(1), p.43-59.
