28) The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

Plot:

The narrator confesses to being nervous by nature, but he is not insane. His nervousness has increased his senses, not dulled them. His hearing is especially keen.

What first led him to do what he did?  He doesn’t know. He loved the old man. The old man never insulted him. He didn’t desire his gold, But his eye—it was like a vulture’s eye. Whenever it fell on the narrator, his blood ran cold.

The narrator asks his audience to see how carefully he planned and executed his plan. Could a madman be so careful?

Thoughts:

This short tale is Poe at his best. The gore is minimal, but the sense of dread and the atmospheric horror ratchet up until the final lines. The irony is exquisite; the narrator denies he is insane. Look how carefully he planned his murder and how in control of himself he is as he relates the events. At the same time, he shows the reader in words and deeds that he is deeply disturbed.

I read this as not involving the supernatural at all. The tell-tale heart the narrator hears is not that of the old man he had just killed but his own, beating fast in reaction to stress. Of course, it is still a horror story because an innocent man has been murdered in cold blood. Poe tells the reader of the victim’s terror in his last moments.

I first read this story when I was about eleven (so long ago, the story was hot off the press…). It scared the bejesus out of me, though I couldn’t tell you why, other than maybe I was reacting to the increase in tension.

The story is remarkably compact. Everything leads up to the climax at the end. For a good horror read, it’s hard to beat.

This story can be read here.

The story can be listened to here, read by Christopher Lee (14:32)

Bio: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) wrote poetry and what some consider the first modern detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The Rue Morgue story detective, C. Auguste Dupin, was an inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The work that made Poe well-known in his time was the poem “The Raven.” Nevertheless, he struggled financially for most of his life and also struggled with alcohol. He died in Baltimore in a manner that still is not understood. According to the Poe Museum, there are more than twenty-six published theories.


Title: “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Author: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
First published: The Pioneer, January 1843