A Psychological Criticism of "The Tell-Tale Heart"

A Psychological Criticism on "the Tell-Tale Heart"

This story is written from a first-person point of view by a madman who is confessing to a murder. He is not telling us his deed because he feels remorse, but rather to prove he is not '" as suspected by the authorities '" insane. He is unsuccessful, however, in this endeavor, as his bizarre narrative only shows us how insane he truly is: not only paranoid and obsessive, but even losing his grip on reality.

Poe does a good job in securing our interest from the very beginning. The first sentence of the story runs, "True!'"'"nervous'"'"very dreadfully nervous I have been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" This can be considered something of a "thesis" for the following tale, as it has not only arrested our attention but also given us a preview of what the is to come. The rest of the story consists of the writers insistence that he is not mad, and to prove it, he will tell us how carefully, how deliberately, how very cleverly he went about the work he is now accused of: that is, the killing of an innocent man.

Before the end of the first paragraph, we already see signs that the narrator is not to be trusted. First he mentions a disease he suffers from, although he swears it has not lessened his senses. This may be true enough, but he goes on to tell us: "I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell." Oddly, this impossible claim is not troubling to the reader merely because it is untrue, (though fully believed by the man telling the story,) but because of the implications of that last bit, "I heard many things in hell." Hell is a place of demons and damned souls, of torture and suffering, of cruel laughter and agonized cries; to think that the narrator is accustomed to hearing these things tells us not only that he is detached, but that there is something very dark at work in his twisted mind. It is shown again later on when he writes,

" Presently I heard a groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror... I knew the

sound very well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it had welled

up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.

I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and I pitied him, although I chuckled

at heart."

It is not enough that the narrator himself suffers midnight terrors, but he must inflict them on others.

Another troubling aspect of the hero/villain who writes the tale is his ability to become so entirely obsessed with any little thing. He admits he had no reason to kill the old man, but once the idea came to him, "it haunted me day and night." Upon further thought, he considers that perhaps his motive was to rid himself of the old man's visage: specifically, of his eye. Then this new object, the old man's eye, takes over the story as the madman latches on to another obsession: "Whenever [the eye] fell upon me, my blood ran cold"; "It was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye"; "[The eye] was wide, wide open'"'"and I grew furious as I gazed upon it." This is the motive, he decides, that drove him to murder. The text is rich with other examples of his obsessive personality, such as the phrase, "A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine."

The most compelling case for his madness, however, is also the most commonly known, and the one for which the story is named. The police arrive at the house with intent to search it. Coolly, confidently, the narrator leads the officers though the house, bringing them at last to the room in which he committed the murder and hid the body. He asks them to sit, but as they begin chatting, he grows restless and wishes they would go; still showing no remorse for his deed. Steadily he becomes aware of a faint noise, "much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton." The sound grows louder, louder, but still the officers show no sign of hearing it. Finally the narrator can stand no more, and the story ends as he rises from his chair shouting, "I admit the deed! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"