The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe

Outline Introduction Setting Characters Point of View My Reflection Symbols Tone

Introduction AUTHOR · Edgar Allan Poe (1809~1849) TYPE OF WORK · Short story TIME WRITTEN · 1843 GENRE · Horror or Gothic Fiction

Setting 1. A random old house 2. The landscape of the narrator's mind

Characters The Unnamed narrator—the murderer of the old man. Male or female? The Old Man—The narrator’s murder victim The Three Policemen—don't really have any characteristics but play a major role in driving the plot. A neighbour —plays a small but important role in the narrator's story.

POINT OF VIEW Unreliable First Person Narrator An omniscient narrator

Summary Obsessed with the vulture-like eye of an old man he otherwise loves and trusts, the narrator smothers the old man, dismembers his body, and conceals the parts under the floorboards of the bedroom. When the police arrive to investigate reports of the old man’s shrieks, the narrator attempts to keep his cool, but hears the beating of the old man’s heart. Afraid that the police know his secret, he rips up the floorboards and confesses his crime.

My Reflection Darkest secret What’s up with the title?

Versions of reality The story disrupts our versions of reality. The narrator’s sensitivity to sound ultimately overcomes him, and he is unable to distinguish between real and imagined sound. The more the narrator proclaims his own cool manner, the more he cannot escape the beating of his own heart, which he mistakes for the beating of the old man’s heart. As he confesses to the crime in the final sentence, he addresses the policemen as “villains”, indicating his inability to distinguish between their real identity and his own villainy.

Mortality The story is a murder mystery, the kind where we know who the killer is, but can‘t really understand his motives. This story deals with the fear of death, with dying, and the question of how a person can kill another. As such, Poe’s story is suffused with an underlying sadness, and a sense of mourning.

Time "The Tell-Tale Heart" is jammed with references to time and clocks. The time structure seems fairly straightforward at first, but, it succeeds in confusing and eluding us. Some questions of time in the story are never answered, contributing to the confusion.

Love and Hate Poe explores the similarity of love and hate and portrays the psychological complexity of these two supposedly opposite emotions, emphasizing the ways they blend into each other. The narrator confesses a love for an old man whom he then violently murders and dismembers.

Symbols The Eyes The Watch The Lantern The Bed and the Bedroom

Tone Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful? “Dreadfully Nervous,” Sad

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