A short story
The Tell-Tale Heart
The narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Allan Poe asserts
that he is anxious and very sensitive but not annoyed and presents his calmness
as he narrates to prove that he is sane. The narrator continues by accounting
how even though he loved a particular old man who had no craving for his money
and had never wronged him, he could not put up with the pale blue filmy eye of
the old man. The narrator confesses that the eye resembled a vulture’s thus
scaring him that he decided to take the old man’s life, to avoid seeing the
eye.
Even if, the narrator is conscious that this validation
seems to prove his insanity, he explicates that he cannot be insane because rather
than being stupid about his wishes, he went ahead and killed with “foresight”
and “caution”. The week preceding the killing of the old man, the narrator
proves to be very caring. He creeps to the old man’s house each night before
midnight and vigilantly shines a lamp directly to the old man’s eye. He does
this for seven consecutive nights, asking the old man how his night had been so
as to cover up any suspicions that may arise.
The eighth night does not go well as planned. As the
narrator opens the door, he slips his thumb on the lamp, making some noise
which wakens the old man. The narrator becomes immobilized as the old man is
terrified and, therefore, does not return to sleep. Eventually, the narrator opts
to open the lamp until the light reflects on the open eyes of the old man. The
nerves of the narrator are disturbed by the sight, and he hopes that due to his
over receptiveness, he has started hearing the heart beats of the old man.
He hears the old man’s heart beat even louder as he shines
the lamps light even strongly to his eyes. The beating becomes even louder that
the narrator is worried that neighbors will get a sound of it. He thus makes a
decision to attack making the old man scream. The narrator then pulls the old
man to the floor and strangles him using a mattress. When the heart beat stops,
the narrator assesses the lifeless body before tearing it apart and hiding it
under the floorboards. The narrator adopts a hysterical tone as he explains the
way the tub sucked the blood, with no traces of blood on the surface.
The narrator was through with the cleaning in the early
morning hours, when he heard a knock on the door. The narrator cheerfully opens
the door to three policemen on investigation following a neighbor’s call
regarding some noise from his house. The narrator, without fear, shows them in
as he believes he has nothing to hide. He tells the police that the yells were
from him due to a bad dream. He also explains that the old man is not in the
house. He allows the policemen to search the house, pulling out chairs that he
had used to cover the corpse under the floorboards. Since the narrator does not
look suspicious, the policemen are satisfied that nothing is wrong. They relax
on the chairs and have a conversation with the narrator. The narrator grows
impatient with time, hoping that the police would take their leave as soon as
possible. He hears loud rings which increase with time. The narrator tries to
suppress this by chatting cheerfully but to no avail. The narrator is disturbed
even more as to him the sound is getting louder. The policemen continue
chatting, suspecting nothing which irritates the narrator even more as feels
that the police are out to ridicule him. To him, he “must scream or die,” thus
he finally spits out the truth persuading the policemen to rip up the
floorboards and uncover the heart beat of the old man.
Rhetorical
Analysis
The character of the “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a perfect case
of Poe’s undependable narrator, who is not trustworthy to narrate the actual
truth of what took place. His unreliability is directly apparent in the first
paragraph, when he persists in his being sane and accredits any indications of
madness to his anxiety and over receptiveness, especially in the hearing part.
Nevertheless, the instant he is done with his sanity affirmation, he gives an
account that has a consequence of, clear logical, openings that can just be
justified by clarity. Poe seeks to arrest the psychotic characters’ mind state,
and the story’s narrator displays amounts of reasoning that are similar to the
logic of dreams more than an ordinary man’s processes of thought.
The emotional instability portrayed by the narrator gives an
apparent counterargument to his best judgment’s assertions. He responds in an
unusual manner in nearly all cases. He is very much bothered by the eye of the
old man that he claims looks like that of a vulture that his reluctance rises
above his affection for the old man, making him pre contemplate a murder.
Afterward, when he eventually kills the victim, he appears to be happy that his
motion is accomplished skillfully and with the prudence that is related to
sanity. Conversely, the policemen’s unsuspecting behavior insinuates that the
narrator has turned out to be fundamentally unaware of his conduct and his
environment. As he cannot keep the gap between actuality and his inner notions,
he confuses his mental protest for physical protest and misunderstands the
innocent talk of the policemen for malice. Even so, he assumes the entire time
that the incidents of the story accurately and rationally, implying that, in
the mind of Poe, the major irrationality is the certainty in one’s rationality.
The ironical bit in the narrator’s version in “The Tell-Tale
Heart” is that even if he declares that he is too cool to be a madman, a noise
that may be his own heart’s beating overcomes him. Due to the untrustworthiness
of the narrator, it is not clear whether the beating is an unnatural effect, a
result of his imagination, or a real sound. The possible explanation in this
story may be that, under stress, the protagonist hears his heart beat, “a low,
dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes enveloped in cotton” (Poe, 2005: 112),
which he confuses for the heart beat by the old man. This misunderstanding
corresponds his unawareness of his deeds as he talks with the policemen and
emphasizes the lapses in motive which contradicts his claims of sanity.
So as to build a narrative that will persuade the reader of
the unsteadiness of the protagonist, Poe employs vocabulary that is constantly
satirical or otherwise harsh to trigger a reaction opposing to that desired by
the narrator. The satirical technique that he employs in his narration is to
influence the implications of words, but he is not clever enough to conceal his
attempt to twist the argument. An outside witness may portray him as having
schemed the old man while he slept, then informs the audience, “you should have
seen how wisely I proceeded--with what caution--with what foresight--with what
dissimulation I went to work!” (Poe, 2005: 112). With his utilization of word
choice like “caution” and “wisely,” he aspires to mislead the reader and
clarify his deeds as those of a sensible and wise person. Nonetheless, the
openness of his effort at deception informs rather than deceives his audience.
Poe’s way of portraying sound happens to be a specifically
important tool for expressing the mood of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” His account
of sound in the final paragraphs of the story is denoted by recurrences that
are evidently meant to entail the noise crescendo. When he articulates, “The
ringing became more distinct:--It continued and became more distinct,” (Poe,
2005:113) we feel the fabricating tension. The beating’s growing intensity is
once again stressed by the phrase, but the noise steadily increased,” that has
thrice been replicated. In the end, the sentences by the narrator soon turn
into exclamations, recurring the word “louder”, echoing the beating of the
heart, and last screams destroys the anxiety with his confession.
Reference
Allan, E.P. (2005) The
best short stories of Edgar Allan Poe: the fall of the house of usher, the
tell-tale heart and other tales, Stilwell: Digireads.com Books.
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