The Tell-Tale Heart Q&A

The Author evokes death several times throughout the short story and does so first with the mention of the vulture. He describes one of the old man’s eyes as resembling a vulture's eye, and the vulture is an animal that has been associated with death since the ancient past given its role as a scavenger in the natural world. Later onwards, Poe refers to the sound of the death watches to indicate that the arrival of death is inevitable. He also indicates the time as being ‘the dead hour’ when he visits the old man’s chambers. In his final mentions of the word, the Narrator indicates that it is Death that approaches the old man, and Death itself is responsible for taking the old man’s life.

Much like the Narrator himself, the old man is never truly characterized in the short story. Moreover, our only source of information for the old man is the Narrator, who has a very warped sense of reality. It can, however, be concluded that the old man was wealthy, and kind since the Narrator states that the old man had never given him any insult and that the crime was never committed out of a desire for the man’s gold.

The house from the story is described as being old and silent, so silent that the Narrator’s mind begins to wander as it attempts to find stimulating sounds. However, the true symbolic meaning of the house becomes clearer near the end of the story, as Poe creates a parallel between the house and the Narrator’s psyche. The Narrator invites the police to search the house in much the same way he invites the reader to go through his mind to determine that he is sane.

The Narrator’s belief that the neighbors would be able to hear the beating of the terrified old man’s heart discredits all the Narrator’s claims to sanity. The beating of the heart is what drives him to action, and at that moment, the Narrator’s obsessive fixation with the Vulture’s eye vanishes and refocuses on the heart. A fixation that remains even after the old man has been killed and dismembered. Interestingly, once the Narrator begins to think about the heart, he never again makes mention of the eye that haunted him for such a long time.

Edgar Allan Poe began a tradition of psychological fiction that Dostoevsky continued. There are several similarities between the protagonists of the Tell-Tale Heart and Crime and Punishment. Both characters commit a murder, bury the evidence, and escape suspicion until their guilt drives them to act in a way that leads to their discovery. The Tell-Tale Heart doesn’t quite delve into the psychological realm of the protagonist in as much detail as crime and punishment, but both stories revolve around the aftermath of a crime and the accompanying guilt the perpetrator experiences.