Suspense in Tell Tale Heart

Suspense in Tell Tale Heart

Suspense plays a major part in the Tell Tale Heart, a horror-fiction short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It is a story told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, all while describing the murder he committed. The narrator’s victim was an old man with what he calls a filmy "vulture-eye". The murder is meticulously orchestrated by the narrator who ultimately hides the body by dismembering it and then stashing it under the floorboards. It is the narrator's feelings of guilt, or his mental state, that result in him thinking he is hearing the dead man's beating heart. Throughout this short story, Poe creates suspense in multiple ways such as the unreliable narrator, his word choice, and the use of first person.

In the story Tell Tale Heart, the narrator, who is a nameless man, watches an old man in his sleep, creeping closer and closer each night. One night the narrator, infuriated with the old man’s look, because he said “ His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it,” that he killed him. He chopped up the old man’s limbs and hid them under the floorboards. The police came into the house after the neighbors filed a complaint, started inspecting, then the narrator started to hallucinate. He thought he was hearing the dead man's heartbeat, and was unaware if the police could hear it too. In Tell Tale Heart, Poe uses an unreliable narrator, specific word choice, and first person, to create the element of suspense.

In the story, the unnamed narrator claims to not be crazy, but he is in fact mentally deranged. He is unaware of his mental illness and thinks he is normal, making him unreliable. In the story he says, “But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind… Indeed, the illness only made my mind, my feelings, my senses stronger, more powerful,” (narrator).In this quote, it shows that the narrator believes that he is no longer sick, and that he is stronger and more healthy than before. Throughout the whole story, the narrator keeps revealing how sick he is, without noticing it. In example, he goes completely insane after killing and hiding the old man’s body. This is because once he hides the body, the police come to the house because the neighbors called and complained. When the police were inspecting the narrator started hearing a noise, sounding like a heartbeat of the dead old man. He started to talk more, thinking that the noise would stop, but actually made the noise louder. The noise got louder each second, but the man did not know if the police could hear as well. The noise that the man thought was the heartbeat ended up just being