My Beating Heart

My Beating Heart

Edgar Allan Poe uses words conservatively in the "Tell-Tale-Heart." This is said to be one of his shortest stories, and his few words allow the story to omit excess detail. He does, however, a remarkable job of allowing the reader to feel the narrator's obsession as they arrive at the climax of the murder. Poe uses eye and the heart in the story as ways of letting the reader use their own senses to imagine what the narrator was feeling. Through these two means of sensing we will see how Poe allows the reader to feel the narrator's insanity, rather than be told the narrator is insane.

The question in sanity is proposed from the very first lines of the story. The narrator describes himself as nervous and pointedly claims that the reader might think him insane, but "Hearken! And observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the story" (705). The contrast between his nervousness and claim of calmness lead the reader to question his stability from the very beginning. This anxiety is almost felt by the reader; one could say they felt the narrator's heart beat increasing.

At this point in the story the eye is introduced. Something about the eye made the narrator's blood boil. These insane feelings are again contrasted by the narrator's claim of not being mad, but rather calm enough to tell how he premeditated the murder of the old man. "You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him (705). The remarkable thing about the eye is the narrator's inability to see that the eye of the man is not the man himself. Claiming that the he loves the old man is contrasted with minimizing the old man to a bad eye. The narrator does not harbor feeling is hate, he does not want retribution for a wrong, not is he jealous of the old man's wealth; yet he hates the eye so much that he is unable to see that the old man and the eye are inherently the same.

The ensuing murder shows how the narrator separates the old man's eye from his identity. It is in this narrator's belief that the eye is separate from the man that Poe illustrates how the man is able to kill and claim that he loves the old man. Poe shows the narrator's belief that he can separate the eye from man when the murderer chooses to dismember the old man. We see this working against the narrator as he imagines other parts of the old man's body working against him, particularly the heart.

The sense of sound is prominent in the story. It is found in the title and as a theme that eventually unravels the murderous narrator. The introduction of a disease that has heightened the senses of the narrator is found in the first few lines of the story. The greatest of these senses is his ability to hear things both in heaven and on earth. This overwhelming sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him as he gives up his deed to the detectives.

Poe develops this obsession with sound as the narrator takes great care watch the old man without making the slightest noise. The care is best expressed when the narrator says, "A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine"