THE TELL-TALE HEART

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe
)1849-1809(
 SUMMARY
An unnamed narrator opens the story by
addressing the reader and claiming that he is
nervous but not mad. He says that he is going to
tell a story in which he will defend his sanity yet
confess to having killed an old man. A fear of the
mans pale blue eye is the reason of killing. Again,
he insists that he is not crazy because his
measured actions are not those of a madman.
Every night, he went to the old mans chamber.
After a week of doing this, the narrator decides
that the time is right to kill the old man.
 On the eighth night, the old man wakes up
and cries out. The narrator remains still. He
knows how frightened the old man is. Soon, the
narrator hears a dull pounding that he
interprets as the old mans heartbeat. Worried
that a neighbor might hear the loud noise, he
attacks and kills the old man. He then
dismembers the body and hides the pieces
below the floorboards in the bedroom. When
he finishes his job, the narrator hears a knock at
the street door. The police have arrived, having
been called by a neighbour who heard the old
man shriek.
 The narrator is careful to appear normal. He
leads the officers all over the house without
acting suspiciously and even brings them into the
old mans bedroom to sit down and talk. The
policemen do not suspect anything. The narrator
is comfortable until he starts to hear a low
pounding sound. He recognizes the low sound as
the heart of the old man coming from beneath
the floorboards. He panics, believing that the
policemen must also hear the sound and know his
guilt. Very angry at the idea that they are
mocking his agony, he confesses to the crime and
shrieks at the men to rip up the floorboards.
 SETTING
The story is set in a house occupied by the
narrator and an old man.

The time of the events in the story is probably

the early 1840's, when Poe wrote the story.
The story covers a period of approximately
eight days with most of the important action
occurring each night around midnight.
 CHARACTERS
The Narrator: He is an unnamed person who
tries to convince the reader that he is not mad.
Instead of pleading innocence, he tries to
convince his listeners that he is sane. The
narrator describes his careful planning and
mastery at deceiving others, priding himself on
his intelligence and the calculated nature of his
crime and stating that a madman would not
have acted as brilliantly as he had done, since
"madmen know nothing."
 POINT OF VIEW
The narration of the story is that of a first-
person unreliable narrator. The narrator is
obviously deranged, readers learn during his
telling of his tale, even though he declares at
the outset that he is sane. The narrative is
filtered through the narrators mind. We call
the narrator unreliable because his telling of
the story is twisted and his vision is distorted
by his madness.
 IRONY
The characterization of the narrator is ironical.
While he insists that he is sane, we know that he is
indeed insane. A madman who is capable of
logical reasoning and planning is also ironical.

All the time, the narrator thinks that the organ of

sight, the Evil Eye, is so vexing; but in the end, a
sound, the beating of the old man's heart, is what
condemns the madman. The guarding against one
danger while being overcome by another
constitutes irony.