The Unraveling Truth Behind ‘the Tell Tale Heart’

The Unraveling Truth Behind ‘The Tell Tale Heart’

The twisted story of “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allan Poe, is centered around a man’s madness. This short story takes place in the mid 1800’s within an old home of an elderly man and a companion. Within this story, Edgar Allan Poe incorporates various stylistic devices and creativity in order to intrigue the audience. Through the use of symbolism as well as visual and auditory images within the watch and eye, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” showcases a man’s mental deterioration and paranoia, which leads the reader into understanding the daunting concept of the evil ego.

Throughout “The Tell Tale Heart”, the “vulture eye” of the old man symbolizes the narrator’s inability to accept his identity. His fixation with the “eye” was linked to the “I” of himself, despite his lack of knowledge of it. While various critics have offered their theoretical approaches on the link between the two, E. Arthur Robinson’s idea of projective envisionment stood out most in which he states that the narrator’s “evil I” is the reasoning behind his obsession with the “evil eye” of the old man and therefore the narrator is evidently the one with the evil eye (Ki 26). The narrator’s evil eye encompasses his evil nature which is shown throughout the story through his narcissistic attempts to prove his sanity while performing inhumane acts: voyeuring the old man while he sleeps, killing him because of his eye, and cutting his body into pieces to hide under the floorboards. The beginning of the story offers the reader the idea that the narrator is psychotic, but he tries to deny that part of his identity by stating, “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily” (Poe 267), which highlights the idea that the narrator is not in a healthy mental state. Through his words the reader is able to depict the idea that the narrator is rejecting his true identity and instead believes he is powerful and infallible since he denies his actions were wrong. The narrator states how the old man had never done anything to upset him, yet he could not stop himself from the idea of killing him because he was so bothered by his eye. Thus, the killing of the old man was simply a result of the self conceited mindset of the narrator due to his evil ego driven by the evil eye.

The eye also symbolizes the idea of the power of sight. Poe uses the idea of voyeurism through the symbol of the eye throughout the story to further express the mental deterioration and evil ego of the narrator. Within the story the narrator spends time looking at the old man or being looked at by the old man, each having their own effect. When the narrator is looking at the old man while he sleeps, he is held back from performing the inhuman act of killing the old man since the evil eye is not present in the moment. The narrator states, “it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (Poe 268). Yet, as soon as the old man opens his eyes and the narrator sees the “evil vulture eye” that he despises so much, his “evil I” comes to the forefront and allows him to continue the daunting task he had set himself out to do. Thus, when the narrator is looking at the old man he is the one with the power since he controls his actions and can withhold from killing him, whereas when the old man looks at the narrator he feels threatened and at unease and is triggered towards protecting himself by killing the old man (Ki 29). Therefore, Poe uses the symbol of the eye to express the effect it can have over the narrator's behavior.

Similar to the eye, Poe uses the visual and auditory image of the watch as a symbol of power, and subsequent powerlessness, to demonstrate the narrator’s madness and evil ego. A watch itself is a visual image of time, as well as an auditory image because of the ticking of the hour and minute hands. In the story, the watch is used as a visual symbol when being compared to the narrator's belief of his power (Jarkko 47). In order to explain to the reader