Introduction

The Tell-Tale Heart

Introduction

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is best known for his horror stories and his creepy love poems.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a classic example of a story with an unreliable narrator. In the first paragraph, the narrator tells us, in effect:

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Yes, I'm nervous, but I'm not crazy. I just have an illness, that's all. An illness that affected my hearing. My hearing had became extremely sensitive. I could even hear things that were happening in Heaven and in Hell. But that doesn't make me crazy, does it? Look, I'll prove to you that I'm not crazy: I'll tell you the story, and you can see for yourself how calm and stable I am.

The narrator then proceeds to "calmly" tell us how he (or she) killed an old man then carefully disposed of the body.

The story leaves several questions unanswered:

Is the narrator male or female?
What is the relationship between the narrator and the victim? Was the narrator a servant in the old man's household? A tenant? Is the old man the narrator's father?
To whom is the narrator confessing? A judge? A prison warden? A reporter? A doctor? (Psychiatry, as a profession, was still in its infancy when the story was written).

The story is open to many symbolic and psychological interpretations, and that is surely one of the reasons that it has become a classic of American literature.