The Tell-Tale Heart Interpretation

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the world’s greatest and most influential connoisseur of short story. He was born on 19th January 1809 in Boston, orphaned at an early age and adopted by a merchant called John Allan from Richmond, Virginia. The Tell-Tale Heart was one of Poe’s famous short stories and it was first published on the 1843. The Tell-Tale Heart is generally considered as a classic of the Gothic fiction genre. If The Tell-Tale Heart was a song, it would be such a painful song to be listened to. The story is told from a first-person point of view perspective. It starts off with an unnamed narrator who attempts to convince the reader about his own sanity, “TRUE! – NERVOUS – VERY, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am;” (Poe 244). Despite

He had no problem with the man himself, but he just absolutely detested the man’s eye to the point where he must rid him of it. Every night he would creep into the old man’s bedroom and stare at him and particularly his eye. He did this for about a week until one night the man was alerted and jumped up in bed. The narrator stood absolutely still in the dark room until he began to hear a thumping that he believed to be the old man’s heartbeat. It grew increasingly loud and being afraid the neighbours might hear it. The narrator jumped on the man and killed him. After dismembering the body and burying the sections beneath the floorboards, the crazed man heard a knock at the door and it was the police who received a report of a shriek coming from the house. The narrator walks them through the house ensuring that everything is alright, and it culminates in the bedroom where he has buried the body. He sits with them and begins to make small talk but eventually he begins to hear the beating heart of the man he just killed. It grows louder and louder and eventually the narrator cannot stand it anymore and agonizingly gives himself up to the policeman, wishing for them to pry up the