The Tell-Tale Heart Detailed Summary
The short story begins with the Narrator expressing his nervousness but disputing the use of the label of a madman. He claims that his condition had sharpened his senses and led him to hear the sounds of heaven and hell. He explains that he was led to murder the old man he loved due to the man’s blue and clouded eyes. It was not a crime of passion, or gain, but born out of the dread that the narrator experienced whenever the old man’s eye turned on him, an eye he described as being the Evil eye. He claims that no madman could have proceeded with as much caution as he had done, for he had never been kinder to the old man than the week before the murder.
For seven nights, the Narrator snuck into the old man’s chamber with a covered lantern, but could never catch a glimpse of that hateful eye. On the eighth night, he proceeded with more caution than ever before, yet the old man heard something move. The Narrator did not move for an hour, but the old man did not lie back down. He moved the cover of the lantern, and a thin ray of light fell directly on that hateful eye. The old man made a groaning sound, one that the Narrator was quite familiar with, for he too had felt the approach of death in the black of night. The Narrator began to hear a heartbeat and deduced that it was the heartbeat of the old man which grew louder and faster with dread. As the ray of light remained on the eye, the heartbeat grew so loud that the Narrator became worried the neighbors would hear the loud heartbeats in the dead silence of the night.
The Narrator attacked and killed the man by strangling him with the bed, allowing only a single shriek of anguish to escape from the murdered man. He waited for the old man’s heart to become still with death, and then very carefully dismembered the body. He cites the thoroughness of his actions in hiding the crime as another proof of his sanity. He leaves no trace of the blood and hides the dismembered corpse behind the wooden floorboards. At four in the morning, the Narrator heard someone knock at the door, and he proceeded to open the door without a single worry about the discovery of his crime. There were three policemen at the door, who had been sent to search the premises after the neighbors had reported hearing a shriek from the house. The Narrator welcomed the officers with a smile and bade them search freely through the house. He lied that the shriek had been his own, on account of a nightmare, and that the old man was away. The Narrator took the police to the room where he had killed and hidden the corpse, and in his confidence, invited them to rest in the room, while he sat on a chair right above the spot where the corpse was hidden.
The Narrator kept up the clam charade for a few more moments before he began to fall apart. His head ached, and he heard a ringing. It soon dawned on him that the ringing noise was not in his head. He tried to cover the sound by growing more animated in the conversation, speaking loudly and quickly. Yet, the noise continued to grow, and the Narrator swung around his chair and scrapped it across the floor in an attempt to drown out the ringing. At length, the Narrator was overcome by the loud noise and the conviction that the police officers knew all. He yelled out his confession and pointed out the spot where the body was hidden, from where the ringing noise of the heart originated.
Analysis
The Tell-Tale Heart serves as a perfect example for the use of an unreliable narrator. The Narrator of the story is shrouded in mystery, so much so that his gender is not established in the tale, and even though he offers a lot of specific information, the reader is never quite sure about its veracity. This is a common feature of Gothic literature, as it makes use of complicated narrative structures, such as the use of incomplete manuscripts, written letters, and dated journal entries. The author never indicates why or how the Narrator is retelling his story, an aspect that can lead one to question the existence of the listener, and about the truth of the given account.
The story establishes the Narrator as an unbalanced character, and it does so in the first few paragraphs, as the reader learns that the Narrator decides to murder the old man without reason. Later onwards, the reader is exposed to another feature of the story that brings into question the narrator’s sanity. It is the odd manner in which the Narrator’s focus suddenly shifts from the creepy, blue, clouded eye of the old man, and instead, he becomes fixated on the sound of a heart.
Poe is known for his contribution to the Gothic genre, and for shifting its focus away from the supernatural, however, this particular tale has a succinct supernatural element. There are many instances in the story that indicate some supernatural force, and the language itself is reminiscent of a nightmare. The descriptions used by the author indicate greater meaning, and none of the characters are ever named or even well described. Most of the characters in the story are nameless, and faceless specters of nightmares. How the old man fails to notice the Narrator’s nightly visits, and the odd behavior of the policemen who sit down to chat with a man at 4 AM, further evidence the existence of something beyond the normal.
The story’s ending sequence also offers us an alternate reading of The Tell-Tale Heart. The Narrator informs the police that the shriek heard by the neighbor had been his own, as he had been having a nightmare. This claim, along with the dream-like quality of the writing in the earlier sections suggests that the murder in itself might have been a dream. However, this alternate interpretation of the story raises the question of the Narrator’s sanity in a different light. The Narrator is unable to differentiate between the real world and the world of his dreams, which is why he is still able to hear the old man’s beating heart in the room where the police officers wait.
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition discussed principles for writing poetry, but The Tell-Tale Heart embodies many of the points that he had put forward. The length of the short story aligns with Poe’s viewpoint that readers ought to be able to read a piece to completion within one sitting. He also argued that the writing should produce a unified effect on the reader, specifically an emotionally unified effect, something that is epitomized here in Poe’s use of language with a nightmarish quality.
