The Tell-Tale Heart: A Ghost’s Story

At first glance, the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” appears to be a sadist, a psychopath – who, consumed by his desire to rid his world of the old man’s eye, takes drastic actions that often leave him reveling in his victim’s pain. His narrative strategy feeds into this, filled with assertions of how carefully he premeditated his crimes, as well as depictions of slowly torturing the old man with fear. However, there are small inconsistencies in the text that prove him to be exaggerating his sadistic responses to events. For instance, why does he “chuckle” at his victim’s terror and ignorance, when “it was not the old man who vexed [him], but his Evil Eye?” (763). Is he truly the monster he claims to be – or is this but a role into which he has been forced? By looking at the prejudiced treatment he receives from the people in his life, we can see that the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is haunted by the stigma surrounding his mental illness, and his consequent reputation as a volatile and uncontrollable individual. This makes him wary of the old man’s kindness, thereby damaging his only friendship and leading him to commit a murder he regrets.

            The narrator’s community is aware, and wary, of the mental illness referred to as his madness. Given that he reveals little else about his background but “the disease [that] had sharpened his senses”, it can be assumed that this disease plays a significant role in his day-to-day world, and in his motives (762). Specifically, his later encounter with the police officers demonstrates that he is often seen having bouts of anger – for the officers’ lack of a reaction to his “[swinging] the chair…and [grating] it upon the boards” implies that this is not a surprising occurrence to them (765). In fact, the way they “chatted pleasantly, and smiled” in response to his anger may have been a condescending attempt to calm him down, in much the same way as people calm children and animals to avoid increasing their wrath (765). His assumption that the officers had been “making a mockery of [his] horror” shows that he is accustomed to being mocked and to having his emotions overlooked as but products of his madness, such that he expects this kind of treatment (765).

            On the other hand, the old man is one of the few – if not the only one – who treats the narrator without bias. This is made evident by the narrator’s fixation on his “vulture eye” (762). As vultures turn their attention upon corpses, so is the old man able to see the narrator – someone considered dead to society – for who he is. For this reason, the old man “had never given [him] insult [and] never wronged [him]”, unlike the police officers and everyone else in the narrator’s world (762). Haunted, however, by the madness that has impaired so many of his other connections, the narrator finds such kindness difficult to accept. This is proven by his depiction of the “film over [the old man’s eye]” – in other words, the idea that the old man is visually impaired (762). In the same way, the narrator believes that the old man is blind to everything wrong with him, and that he does not deserve his friendship. This sentiment is amplified during the last of the narrator’s nightly visits, in which he describes that the old man “had been trying to comfort himself with…suppositions [of safety]; but he had found all in vain” (764). The old man’s attempts to reason away the things that go bump in the night serve as a parallel to how he overlooks the narrator’s madness, further establishing the narrator’s self-concept as an “unperceived shadow” that the old man ought to fear (764).

            The narrator’s desire for the old man to come to his senses is what leads him to “look…in upon him while he [sleeps],” in the hopes of provoking a healthy sense of fear (763). Though he claims to have intended murder, this is contradicted by how he takes no action for “seven long nights,” simply observing the old man for hours on end (763). The reason he provides for this behavior is that “the eye [was] always closed” – but this, again, is contradicted by the care he takes “not [to] disturb the old man’s sleep,” when waking him would make the eye visible and spare him plenty of time (763). One might question why the narrator would go through the trouble of regularly breaking and entering, if he does not intend anything so drastic as homicide. However, he does not have to expend much effort on this endeavor at all, for he and the old man share a household. This is proven by the narrator’s relative ease in entering the old man’s house (despite the “shutters [being] close fastened, for fear of robbers”), and his depictions of going “boldly into his chamber,” not “boldly into his [house]” – as if he has only had to travel from one room to the next (763). So it is that he may easily observe the old man every night, shining “a single thin ray [of light] upon the vulture eye” as if to pierce the film that prevents him from recognizing a monster (763).

            The “low, dull, quick sound – much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” demonstrates that the narrator has succeeded in scaring the old man (764). He states that he “knew that sound well,” with an emphasis on “that” as if to express derision or dread (764). This despised familiarity stems from the narrator’s encounters with people whose hearts would then speed up with fear in his midst. Examples of such people include the police officers, whose hearts exhibited the same “low, dull, quick sound” as they waited for the narrator to explode before them (765). As the narrator associates sanity with being “very, very slow,” so does he view the neurotypical people who ostracize him as watches, which move slowly in counting the seconds (763). Watches also share a name with the verb “watch,” which invokes vigilance, and quickly responding to anything that is out of the ordinary (such as the narrator himself). Those known as watches have haunted the protagonist in the past, giving him cause to “hearken…to the death-watches in the wall…many a night” for fear of being hurt (763). Now, as a result of the narrator’s self-sabotage, the old man has become one of them.

This fills the narrator with unexpected shame and fright, as he grapples with having given up his only chance at friendship and humanity. First, he tries to deny the sound of the old man’s fearful heart, “pull[ing] the heavy bed over him [until] at length it ceased” (764). In doing so, however, he reveals himself as the phantom stalker. Freeing the old man would force the narrator to face him, and to face the damage that his actions had inflicted upon their relationship. He cannot bring himself to stand up, and suffocates his only companion to death. In the process of hiding the body, he states that “no human eye…could have detected anything wrong” (765). Only he is aware of what has transpired, and only he has the “sharpened…senses” necessary to notice the discrepancies in the room (765). However, he no longer sees his eyes as those of a human being, just as he no longer sees himself as one. This is because, in ensuring that the old man’s “eye would trouble [him] no more,” he loses the last person in the world who had faith in his humanity (764). He has lost everything. The only thing left for him is to earn justice for the friend he almost had.

As the narrator resolves to face justice for his crimes, he exaggerates his role as a coldhearted criminal, such that he may be taken seriously by those who think him nothing but a madman. Even as the narrator “foamed [and] raved [and] swore” in the police officers’ midst, they “chatted pleasantly, and smiled” as though nothing had been wrong – choosing to dismiss all as the ravings of a lunatic (765). Known as a madman to so many others, the narrator has to undergo extra effort to ensure that he is properly convicted, and that the old man receives the justice he deserves. This is evident in the way that he begins his account of the crime, stating that “the disease had sharpened [his] senses – not destroyed – not dulled them” (762). He wants others to understand that he had been well within his wits and knew exactly what he was doing when he killed his friend, lest his sentence be unjustly reduced.

He is able to further achieve this by acting as though he had been carefully planning the murder, leading to the cold and calculating attitude he presents throughout the story. He starts by taking “wise precautions…for the concealment of the body,” cutting it up in a manner that anyone else would deem psychopathic (764). Then, he meets the police officers with “the enthusiasm of…confidence,” betraying no sign whatsoever of regret – when really, the way he “placed [his] own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim” had been a ploy to get caught (765). In recounting his tale, he dismisses any evidence of his friendship with the old man by playing this up as a pretense, and implying that he “spoke courageously to him” in the morning to derive more amusement from his nightly activities (763). When he wanders too far down the well of regret in describing the old man’s fear, he quickly dismisses this by stating that he “chuckled at heart” (763). In truth, however, any claims he makes of sadism are contradicted by his statement that “it was not the old man who vexed [him], but his Evil Eye” (763). Any claims of premeditation and “foresight” may be refuted by the uncertainty he displays in stating that he “think[s] it was [the] eye” which drove him to murder – as though he had been pressured to come up with a motive on the spot, and decided to stick with a detail that stood out to him (762). Ghost stories are often used to address cultural and societal issues, and with its subtle analysis of how ill treatment of mental health struggles turns madness into a self-fulfilling prophecy, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is no exception. Despite being treated as an outsider, and despite his drastic actions, the narrator is haunted by the same emotions as you and I – fear, shame, and a tricky relationship with the desire for acceptance. Only by living under circumstances in which he is seen as a madman, a monster, and one of the dead, is he ultimately reduced to a ghost – come to haunt his world, his friend, and himself.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart”, edited by Robert S. Levine, Shorter Ninth Edition ed., 

vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2017, pp. 762–766.