A review on "The tell-tale heart" short story by Edgar Allan Poe
The tell-tale heart is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, reputed to be the lord of dark short stories, written in 1843. The title can represent what the reader is going to face with, the thumping of a heart, but whose heart? This is what makes the story absorbing because it keeps getting complicated and mysterious, and I love the way writer bombards the readers with questions in their minds. Edgar Allan Poe has written several stories during his short-time life, but most of them are written in horror and gothic genre such as “The tell-tale heart” which has been one of the stories he owes his reputation to.
The story begins with the very first words of a nervous narrator, considered a man in my mind, defending himself and trying to prove that he is not mad, he is confessing to a crime though. He keeps explaining how he became motivated by a kind of fear, an unreasoned fear of pale blue eye which he describes as a vulture eye, the old man’s eye, a man who did no harm to him and he had no desire for the old man’s possessions.
“He claims that he loves the old man though, how is it possible for the two opposite senses to be combined with each other? The vulture eye is the source of feeling hatred for the old man. Why a vulture eye? A vulture is an animal which eats other dead animals and his duty is based on his own advantage. The madman considers the eye totally separated from the old man because he remembers the old man as an affable man.”
But there was something in his eyes that chilled him whenever he looked at them. “He claims that he’s not insane and keeps proving it with only one question: how can a madman have planned such measured actions for a murder and be this much cool and cautious? A ridiculous question. Not even is a petty larceny possible without caution and sagacity and this is what all convicts know.”
He is such an artful man that he could deceive the old man and treat him as the best friend he could have had, especially during the last days of his life. For seven nights he goes over the old man’s bed while he’s sleeping and he takes pride in his boldness, but every time he finds the eye closed, so there’s nothing special to go mad with. But when the eighth night comes, the time for the old man to die comes as well. Within the eighth night, he made a low-pitched cackle as he opened the door delicately, for he was thinking of his sagacity and accuracy and the old man woke up and sprang in his bed as he heard his sound.
None of them did dare to move for a long time until he decided to open the door a bit more so as to see the eye, so he put a low beam upon the vulture eye, this time wide open, made him seethe with rage. Then he could hear the pounding sound, of course with his honed sense of hearing, it was the old man’s terrified heart. He wanted to hold back but it was getting harder as the sound of the beating heart was growing louder and louder. No more did he keep back with the fear of the pounding sound being heard by any of the neighbors and he knew that it’s time. So he jumped into the room and made the sound ceased with asphyxiating him. He was dead and there was no more beating and then he dismembered the old man’s body and hide its pieces below the floorboards of the room.
“There comes to my idea the fact that there is a twist in the plot story. Why didn’t he just make the old man blind and get rid of the eye? Here is the answer, first he had a problem with the old man’s eye but then it suddenly changed to the pounding sound.”
The neighbors, having heard a shriek, had called the police and they had come to research. He lets them in and do their research and everything’s fine until he hears the beating of the heart again, assuming that it’s the sound of the old man’s. But it keeps driving him crazy because he thinks that the policemen must have heard it as well and so they must have known about his guilt and they must arrest him, but they do nothing instead. So he thought they’re mocking him as the sound of pounding was growing louder every moment like before and he could resist no more that he cried out and confessed committing the crime.
“There is a tricky question, how is it possible to hear the old man’s heartbeat while he is dead? If this sound is imaginary, how does he expect the policemen hear it? What if it’s factual and it is the sound of his own heartbeat confessing in front of the policemen and betraying its own lord and his sanity? And so he is judged by his own body and his guilt is revealed by his sanity.”
