The Tell-Tale Heart

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"The Tell-Tale Heart"
The Pioneer Poe 1843 cover 2.jpg
Author Edgar Allan Poe
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Short story
Gothic Literature
Published in The Pioneer
Publication type Periodical
Publisher James Russell Lowell
Media type Print (periodical)
Publication date January 1843

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe first published in 1843. It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. (The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it.) The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator's guilt manifests itself in the form of the sound—possibly hallucinatory—of the old man's heart still beating under the floorboards.



Plot summary[edit]

Illustration by Harry Clarke, 1919




Publication history[edit]





The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is generally assumed to be male. However, some critics have suggested a woman may be narrating; no pronouns are used to clarify one way or the other.[5] The story starts in medias res. The opening is an in-progress conversation between the narrator and another person who is not identified in any way. It is speculated that the narrator is confessing to a prison warden, judge, newspaper reporter, doctor or psychiatrist.[6] This sparks the narrator's need to explain himself in great detail.[7] What follows is a study of terror but, more specifically, the memory of terror as the narrator is relating events from the past.[8] The first word of the story, "True!", is an admission of his guilt, as well as an assurance of reliability.[6] This introduction also serves to immediately grab the reader's attention and pull him/her into the story.[9] From there, every word contributes to the purpose of moving the story forward, possibly making "The Tell-Tale Heart" the best example of Poe's theories on a perfect short story.[10]

The story is driven not by the narrator's insistence upon his innocence but by insistence on his sanity. This, however, is self-destructive because in attempting to prove his sanity he fully admits he is guilty of murder.[11] His denial of insanity is based on his systematic actions and precision—a rational explanation for irrational behavior.[7] This rationality, however, is undermined by his lack of motive ("Object there was none. Passion there was none."). Despite this, he says the idea of murder, "haunted me day and night".[11] The story's final scene, however, is a result of the narrator's feelings of guilt. Like many characters in the Gothic tradition, his nerves dictate his true nature. Despite his best efforts at defending himself, the narrator's "over acuteness of the senses," which help him hear the heart beating beneath the floorboards, is actually evidence that he is truly mad.[12] Readers during Poe's time would have been especially interested amidst the controversy over the insanity defense in the 1840s.[13]

The narrator claims to have a disease which causes hypersensitivity in his senses. A similar motif is used for Roderick Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and in "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" (1841).[14] It is unclear, however, if the narrator actually has very acute senses or if he is merely imagining things. If his condition is believed to be true, what he hears at the end of the story may not be the old man's heart but deathwatch beetles. The narrator first admits to hearing death-watches in the wall after startling the old man from his sleep. According to superstition, death-watches are a sign of impending death. One variety of deathwatch beetles raps its head against surfaces, presumably as part of a mating ritual, while others emit a ticking sound.[14] Henry David Thoreau had suggested in 1838 that the deathwatch beetles sound similar to a heartbeat.[15] The beating could even be the sound of the narrator's own heart in his nervousness. Alternatively, if the heart beating is really a product of the narrator's imagination, it is that uncontrolled imagination that leads to his own destruction.[16]

The relationship between the old man and the narrator is ambiguous. Their names, occupations, and where they live are not given. In fact, that ambiguity and anonymity add to the tale as an ironic counter to the strict attention to detail in the plot.[17] The narrator may be a servant of the old man's or, as is more often assumed, his son. In that case, the "vulture-eye" of the old man is symbolizing parental surveillance and possibly the paternal principles of right and wrong. The murder of the eye, then, is a removal of conscience.[18] The eye may also represent secrecy, again playing on the lack of detail about the old man or the narrator. Only when the eye is finally found open on the final night, penetrating the veil of secrecy, is the murder carried out.[19] Regardless, their relationship is incidental; the focus of the story is the perverse scheme to commit the perfect crime.[20]

Former United States Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur has suggested that the tale is an allegorical representation of Poe's poem "To Science". The poem shows the struggle between imagination and science. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the old man represents the scientific rational mind while the narrator is the imaginative.[21]


  • In 1956, an adaptation of the "The Tell-Tale Heart" was written by William Templeton for the NBC Matinee Theatre and aired on the 6th November 1956.


  6. ^ a b Benfey, Christopher. "Poe and the Unreadable: 'The Black Cat' and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'", collected in New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Kenneth Silverman, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-521-42243-7, p. 30.
  11. ^ a b Robinson, E. Arthur. "Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'" from Twentieth Century Interpretations of Poe's Tales, edited by William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1971, p. 94.
  12. ^ Fisher, Benjamin Franklin. "Poe and the Gothic Tradition," from The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-79727-6, p. 87.
  13. ^ Cleman, Bloom's BioCritiques, p. 66.
  14. ^ a b Reilly, John E. "The Lesser Death-Watch and "'The Tell-Tale Heart'," collected in The American Transcendental Quarterly. Second quarter, 1969.
  15. ^ Robison, E. Arthur. "Thoreau and the Deathwatch in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'," collected in Poe Studies, vol. IV, no. 1. June 1971. pp. 14-16
  16. ^ Eddings, Dennis W. "Theme and Parody in 'The Raven'", collected in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990. ISBN 0-9616449-2-3, p. 213.
  17. ^ Benfey, New Essays, p. 32.
  19. ^ Benfey, New Essays, p. 33.
  31. ^ [1]

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