Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart": Sexuality, Love, and Desire

In The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator of the story is unable to merge love and desire into one affection because of his own psychological disorder. There are ambiguous instances in the short story where the narrator comes out and states he has a disorder but from his actions and hidden meanings within language the reader is able to recognize an overwhelming problem in the narrator: he can not merge love and desire because his desires are very sadistic. Sadism is obviously a disorder of the mind and the narrator encompasses this trait throughout the story.

Poe ignites his language with sexual energy in The Tell-Tale Heart and it coincides with the fact that pleasure and desire are separate from love in the case of the narrator: "I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in!" (1572). The narrator is deriving great pleasure from both the evilness of what he is doing and the language with which he is comparing the scene towards. The language jumps out to be very sexual and represents the act of making love. Lovemaking has been twisted greatly by the narrator into an act of pain and evil instead of an act of love.

All the narrator desires is to kill the old man whom he loves: "I loved the old man" (1572). If one loves someone they would never murder him or her or take such pleasure in the act. Pleasure should be derived from the love within the relationship and supporting that relationship, not in ending it. Pritchard states that "Interestingly, a dichotomy is created between the narrator's love for and his desire to kill the old man"(144).

The narrator has turned the murder almost into an act of seduction: "I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously (for the hinges creaked)- I undid it just so much that a single thing ray fell upon the vulture eye" (1572). This line is similar to the way a man would undress a woman very carefully during the first act of love and then it would reveal what is desired underneath clothing as the lantern reveals the object of the narrators desire: the eye of the old man.

The murder of the old man is also going to take place in the bedroom, the most intimate of places where lovers would lie: "I looked in upon him while he slept" (1573). Pritchard notes that watching someone while they are sleeping is a true act of love for any sane person, but the narrator is watching so he can plot his kill. The narrator has twisted another loving act into a sadistic one (146). The narrator becomes as excited about the murder as one would about the act of love: he is giddy, laughing, nervous, and acts childishly as one would towards lovemaking because this is his first time at murdering someone.

The murder itself is representative of the actual act of love in different ways. The eye could be compared to the female anatomy at this point because it is the object of the narrator's desire: "It was open - wide, wide open - and I grew furious as I gazed upon it" (1573). The object the narrator has been pining after for so long is finally there for him and it brings about hate and anger that fuel his desire to commit his foul act. The beating of the old man's heart seems to be symbolic to the actual physical act of love. The pulsing and beating that is occurring during the murder appears to represent the motions of lovemaking and that when the old man is dead, his heart stops, the act of love is over. Poe also makes a point of noting that there is no blood on the bed: "There was nothing to wash out - no stain of any kind - no blood spot whatever" (1574). The narrator is thrilled that there is no blood to clean, as there would have been on the first time a man and woman made love. The narrator makes the blood out to be a bad thing, but what is symbolizes is that a man and woman have shared in something special and beautiful together, the polar opposite of what the blood represents to the narrator.

Though the narrator manages to avoid sexual confrontation it still manages to seep into his thoughts. The narrator considers the invasion of his thoughts to be evil when he is hearing the heart beat after the murder: "it is the beating of his hideous heart!" (1575). The beating, which could represent lovemaking, is still on the narrator's mind and he can not purge himself of it. Zimmerman states that Poe might be saying that sex is on everyone's mind and that if one is able to correlate sex/desire to love then it is the key to happiness and sanity (42). What the reader does not want to do is separate love and desire and that it is important to find harmony with the two.

Even though Poe supposedly had trouble handling sexuality in his personal life, it appears that he is trying to warn readers of the problems that can occur from not being able to handle and understand one's desires. With desiring being a branch of love then there is no problem with wanting to be intimate with a loved one. But when sex is used for simple pleasure and callously, consequences could ultimately be dire. This is good advice for readers of Poe's time and readers of present time because desire/sex is something that is not to be taken lightly saved for acts of love.

Works Cited

1. Poe, Edgar Allen. The Cask of Amontillado. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6^th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

2. Pritchard, Hollie "Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart." Explicator. 61 (Spring 2003) 144 - 148.

3. Zimmerman, Brett. "Frantic Forensic Oratory: Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart." 35 (Spring 2001) 34 - 50.