Background of the Author

Poe's Childhood
Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That
makes him Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius. His parents
were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore on
July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married
David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar,
and Rosalie.
Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from
her husband and had taken her three kids with her. Henry went to live with his
grandparents while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was taken
in by another family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good
surroundings and went to good schools.
When Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He learned Latin and
French, as well as math and history. He later returned to school in America and continued
his studies. Edgar Allan went to the University of Virginia in 1826. He was 17. Even
though John Allan had plenty of money, he only gave Edgar about a third of what he
needs. Although Edgar had done well in Latin and French, he started to drink heavily and
quickly became in debt. He had to quit school less than a year later.

Poe in the Army

Edgar Allan had no money, no job skills, and had been shunned by John Allan.
Edgar went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in 1827. He was 18. He did reasonably
well in the Army and attained the rank of sergeant major. In 1829, Mrs. Allan died and
John Allan tried to be friendly towards Edgar and signed Edgar's application to West
Point.
A Struggling Writer
In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had some of his poetry
published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and they were all rejected. Poe
had no friends, no job, and was in financial trouble. He sent a letter to John Allan begging
for help but none came. John Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will.
In 1835, Edgar finally got a job as an editor of a newspaper because of a contest
he won with his story, "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle". Edgar missed Mrs. Clemm
and Virginia and brought them to Richmond to live with him. In 1836, Edgar married his
cousin, Virginia. He was 27 and she was 13. Many sources say Virginia was 14, but this is
incorrect. Virginia Clemm was born on August 22, 1822. They were married before her
14th birthday, in May of 1836. In case you didn't figure it out already, Virginia was Virgo.
As the editor for the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe successfully managed the
paper and increased its circulation from 500 to 3500 copies. Despite this, Poe left the
paper in early 1836, complaining of the poor salary. In 1837, Edgar went to New York.
He wrote "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" but he could not find any financial
success. He moved to Philadelphia in 1838 where he wrote "Ligeia" and "The Haunted

Palace". His first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" was
published in 1839. Poe received the copyright and 20 copies of the book, but no money.
Sometime in 1840, Edgar Poe joined George R. Graham as an editor for Graham's
Magazine. During the two years that Poe worked for Graham's, he published his first
detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and challenged readers to send in
cryptograms, which he always solved. During the time Poe was editor, the circulation of
the magazine rose from 5000 to 35,000 copies. Poe left Graham's in 1842 because he
wanted to start his own magazine.
Poe found himself without a regular job once again. He tried to start a magazine
called The Stylus and failed. In 1843, he published some booklets containing a few of his
short stories but they didn't sell well enough. He won a hundred dollars for his story, "The
Gold Bug" and sold a few other stories to magazines but he barely had enough money to
support his family. Often, Mrs. Clemm had to contribute financially. In 1844, Poe moved
back to New York. Even though "The Gold Bug" had a circulation of around 300,000
copies, he could barely make a living.
In 1845, Edgar Poe became an editor at The Broadway Journal. A year later, the
Journal ran out of money and Poe was out of a job again. He and his family moved to a
small cottage near what is now East 192nd Street. Virginia's health was fading away and
Edgar was deeply distressed by it. Virginia died in 1847, 10 days after Edgar's birthday.
After losing his wife, Poe collapsed from stress but gradually returned to health later that
year.
Final Days

In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to Philadelphia, where he visited his
friend John Sartain. Poe left Philadelphia in July and came to Richmond. He stayed at the
Swan Tavern Hotel but joined "The Sons of Temperance" in an effort to stop drinking. He
renewed a boyhood romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in
October.
On September 27, Poe left Richmond for New York. He went to Philadelphia and
stayed with a friend named James P. Moss. On September 30, he meant to go to New
York but supposedly took the wrong train to Baltimore. On October 3, Poe was found at
Gunner's Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, and was taken to the hospital.
He lapsed in and out of consciousness but was never able to explain exactly what
happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died in the hospital on Sunday, October 7, 1849.
The mystery surrounding Poe's death has led to many myths and urban legends.
The reality is that no one knows for sure what happened during the last few days of his
life. Did Poe die from alcoholism? Was he mugged? Did he have rabies? A more detailed
exploration of Poe's death can be found here.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/p/poes-short-stories/edgar-allan-poe-biography

THE TELL-TALE HEART

ELEMENT OF THE STORY
CHARACTERS

THE OLD MAN

The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator, partly because we only see
him through the narrator's skewed perspective. We know he has money (the narrator
shows the old man's "treasures" to the police). We also know he has a blue eye that the
narrator is afraid of, and which fits the description of a corneal ulcer. We know he's old,
and that he's a fairly sound sleeper.

THE THREE POLICEMEN

The three policemen don't really have any characteristics. Yet, they play a major role
in driving the plot of the narrator's story, so we should at least consider them. They seem
to be conscientious they waste no time in showing up at the house after suspicion is
aroused. Furthermore, they don't leave after the narrator has given them the tour of the
house, but seem to stick around to see what such pressure might induce. The three
policemen are fairly unambiguous, flat characters who do exactly what they are supposed
to do.

A NEIGHBOR

The neighbor plays a small but important role in the narrator's story. As noted in the
old man's "Character Analysis," the neighbor shows us that the narrator and/or the old
man are alienated from their community. The narrator expresses fear that "a neighbour"
will hear the old man's heart beating, and, sure enough, one little scream and the neighbor
gets out of his or her bed, goes down to the police station, and raises enough flags to get
the cops out the old house extremely quickly. The fact that the neighbor's complaint was

taken seriously suggests that he or she doesn't do this every day if he or she did, the
cops might have ignored the complaint.
SETTINGS

A HOUSE

We don't know where the narrator is while he's telling the story of the old man's
murder. The story he tells us takes place inside a random old house about which few
details are directly given. We are told that the old man keeps his shutters tightly locked. A
neighbor hears at least one of the story's two screams. The cops arrive promptly, just after
the narrator has hidden the body. As such, the house might be in an urban area, possibly a
high-crime one.
As to the interior of the house, we only hear about the old man's bedroom, which is
the place where horror plays in the dark while the old man sleeps, completely unaware.
The room is all the more scary because it isn't described, because we can't see it. This
story taps our fears of the dark, and what the dark might hold.
In speech class you probably heard that a majority of people (in America) claim that
public speaking is their number one fear. What about the fear of someone in your own
house spying on you each night while you sleep, wanting to kill you, and then being
totally friendly to you during the day? Even without the murder part, that kicks public
speaking in the pants if you ask us.
The "ideal" bedroom is supposed to be a fairly private place where we can rest and
recuperate without fear. The narrator completely violates the sanctity of the bedroom in

this story. The night spying is possibly more terrifying for our imaginations than the
murder itself.
The landscape of the narrator's mind is also a setting of the story and it echoes the
external or surface setting, the man's bedroom. Just as we are unable to see the bedroom,
the narrator is unable to see his own mind.
PLOT ANALYSIS
Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation,
conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers
sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
INITIAL SITUATION
The narrator wants to show that he is not insane, and offers a story as proof. In
that story, the initial situation is the narrator's decision to kill the old man so that the
man's eye will stop looking at the narrator.
CONFLICT
The narrator goes to the old man's room every night for a week, ready to do the
dirty deed. But, the sleeping man won't open his eye. Since the eye, not the man, is the
problem, the narrator can't kill him if the offending eye isn't open.
COMPLICATION
The narrator makes a noise while spying on the old man, and the man wakes up
and opens his eye.

This isn't much of a complication. The man has to wake up in order for the
narrator to kill him. If the man still wouldn't wake up after months and months of the
narrator trying to kill him, now that would be a conflict.
CLIMAX
The narrator kills the old man with his own bed and then cuts up the body and
hides it under the bedroom floor.
SUSPENSE
The narrator is pretty calm and collected when the police first show up. He gives
them the guided tour of the house, and then invites them to hang out with him in the
man's bedroom. But, the narrator starts to hear a terrible noise, which gets louder and
louder.
DENOUEMENT
Well, the noise gets even louder, and keeps on getting louder until the narrator
can't take it anymore. Thinking it might make the noise stop, the narrator tells the cops to
look under the floorboards.
CONCLUSION
Up to this moment, the narrator doesn't identify the sound. It's described first as "a
ringing," and then as "a low, dull, quick sound much such a sound as a watch makes
when enveloped in cotton". Only in the very last line does the narrator conclude that the
sound was "the beating of the man's hideous heart!"

THEMES OF THE STORY

REALITY

Even as we identify with it in ways we might not want to admit. Something sparks
our curiosity and forces us to follow the narrator through the chilling maze of his mind.
We hear the story of murder through words, and through his version of reality.

CUNNING AND CLEVERNESS

The main character of "The Tell-Tale Heart" promises us a tale of cunning and
cleverness, and delivers. At the onset, we doubt the cleverness; maybe we even feel
cleverer than the story. But as Edgar Allan Poe's ten-paragraph masterpiece unfolds, we
find we are caught in the story's web, just as the characters are. We must regain our
cunning and cleverness to get out. It'll make us smarter.

THE HOME

"Home is where the heart is." Edgar Allan Poe makes a mockery of this shop worn
phrase in "The Tell-Tale Heart," expressing some deep anxieties toward the very idea of
"home" and "home". Here home is a place of violence, death, disease, anguish, and
isolation. It's also a place where mysterious hearts tell tales in the night, grim tales, of
home gone bad.

MORTALITY

"The Tell-Heart" is a murder mystery; the kind where we know who the killer but
can't really understand his motives. This story deals with the fear of death, with dying,

and the question of how a person can kill another. As such, Edgar Allan Poe's story is
suffused with an underlying sadness, and a sense of mourning.

TIME

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is jammed with references to time and clocks. One could even
say it's obsessed with time. The time structure seems fairly straightforward at first, but,
through all the aforementioned references, it succeeds in confusing and eluding us. Some
questions of time in the story are never answered, contributing to the confusion.
POINT OF VIEW

FIRST PERSON (CENTRAL NARRATOR)

Most Poe narrators are unreliable first person narrators. This doesn't necessarily mean
they don't show up when they say they will, but rather that they either can't or won't tell
us what really happened.
In this case, the narrator is trying to prove his sanity. One bit of proof he offers is his
ability to exercise "dissimulation" with the old man. So, if he's trying to prove he's sane,
and dissimulation is a proof of sanity, doesn't that suggest his probably using the old
dissimulation on us, too?
The narrator also admits that due to his intensely powerful sense of hearing, "he can
hear all things in the heaven and in the earth and many things in hell". So, he isn't
gripping reality very tightly, due in part to a sick mind, and in another part to a sick body.

On occasion, he also pretends to be an omniscient narrator. He tells us how the old

man feels and what the old man is thinking. Here's an example: "Presently I heard a slight
groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. I knew the sound well. Many a night
it has welled up from my own bosom".
As you can see, the narrator's insight into the man's head is just a reflection of his
own experience. Yet, he's probably right. In this moment he humanizes both himself and
the man through empathy.
Unreliable narrators are compelling because they represent a basic aspect of being
human. We all experience moments of unreliability, where we can't perceive or remember
events accurately. We all get confused and do and say things we don't mean or don't mean
to do or say. In a story like "The Tell-Tale Heart," this unreliability is taken to extremes.
The scare power in this technique is the nagging knowledge that we could become a
person like the narrator, or a victim of a person like the narrator, a person whose inner
unreliable narrator has totally taken over.

LEVELS OF LANGUAGES

WRITING STYLES

CONCISELY CHAOTIC

Stylistically, Poe can be quite maddening, even as we marvel at the precision and
at the tightly packed, exquisitely worded, yet curiously rough sentences each open to
hours of debate.
Within the ten-paragraph frame of "A Tell-Tale Heart" we see many groups of
short sentences, like this: "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old
man". A web of complications spun from just thirteen words.
We also see longer sentences like this: "So I opened it you cannot imagine how
stealthily, stealthily until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot
from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye".
Notice how the longer sentence is actually less ambiguous and frustrating than the
very short ones. The long sentence gives us a precise description, while the short ones
leave us grasping for meaning. Of course, you can probably find examples of the reverse.
This is a carefully constructed world, a miniature word puzzle where each piece reflects
an angle of the narrator's chaotic mind.
SOUTHERN GOTHIC
Poe is often considered a "Southern Gothic" author, that is, an author whose work
deals with issues and anxieties over slavery in the southern United States.

GENRE

Horror or Gothic Fiction is one of the easy genres to spot, and also one of the most
funs to explore, as long as you don't mind looking at the hard stuff. Snapped minds,
crypt-like spaces, actual crypts, death and dismemberment, fear, the extremes of human

behavior, a juxtaposition of the "sacred" and the "profane" these are some of the sure
signs you're in a Gothic story, or at least a Gothic moment.
There are many sub-genres within this genre. In the "supernatural Gothic"
supernatural forces literally cause the scary stuff that happens. In the "explained Gothic"
it seems at first like supernatural forces are in play, but, by the end of the story,
everything is neatly explained. There's also the "ambiguous Gothic." This is harder to
explain, because it's so ambiguous. These stories are open to multiple interpretations, all
of which rely on facts outside the story. Nothing in the story really makes sense. We have
no "supernatural" or "reasonable" explanation with which to reassure ourselves.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" probably falls in category three. It's been over a hundred years
since the story was written, and nobody knows precisely what to make of it, in spite of
much study.
Poe's work is often considered part of the "Southern Gothic" tradition. Stories in this
genre deal with anxieties and issues related to slavery in the southern U.S., sometimes in
a veiled or hidden way. We think "The Tell-Tale Heart" might fit under that category, too.

TONE

While some Poe stories have a kind of fun and playful feel to them in spite of their
themes of death, murder, and betrayal, "Tell-Tale" makes us want to cry. The narrator is
so pathetic and, as we suggest in his "Character Analysis," is probably physically ill. The

narrator seems to have had a pretty bad life, which probably only gets worse after the
murder and subsequent confession.
Poe wrote that "Melancholy is the most legitimate of all the poetical tones". The
extent to which this tone of sadness manifests in Poe's work varies widely from piece to
piece. The tone of Poe's poem "The Raven" is overtly sad. The narrator's speech is rolling
and mournful, echoing the feeling of sadness.
"Tell-Tale" is much different. The sadness is woven in the nervousness we find in
every line. This story might not seem sad at all on the first read. We are somewhat
amused by the narrator's ridiculous arguments and think the whole thing might be a sick
joke. Perhaps we feel slightly superior as we unravel all the discrepancies. But, upon
reflection, we realize we've read the story of a man who, plagued by diseases of the body
of the mind, is in a near constant state of stress, nerves, and meltdown.
Even if he is a murderer, the narrator is a sad figure, and it comes through in the
nervous, frantic tone of the story.

LITERARY DEVICES
SYMBOLISM, IMAGERY, ALLEGORY

THE OLD MAN'S EYE

The old man's eye is blue with a "film" or "veil" covering it. This could be a medical
condition, like a corneal ulcer, but symbolically it means that the characters have issues
with their "inner vision" what's commonly known as one's outlook on the world. They
are stuck. Everything is obscured for them. Our reading of the story is likewise filtered
through this hazy eye, causing at least some confusion and frustration with the text

THE WATCH

The narrator mentions a "watch" four times in the story. A watch is a visual and
auditory representation of time. The watch watches time, and tells tales of time. Time can
also be said to be watching death, up ahead in the distance. Each tick of the watch
symbolizes a movement closer to the inevitable death that all humans face. Poe presents
this subtly in the story's first mention of the watch: "A watch's minute hand moves more
quickly than did mine"

THE LANTERN

This lantern is pretty cool. You can burn a candle or oil in it but it has hinged panels
that can be adjusted to let in as much or as little light as you want. The narrator keeps
most of the light hidden; only allowing one "ray" to escape. This lantern is the narrator's
weapon against the old man's eye. That's what we see on the eighth night the lantern
and the eye in a stare-down. It also suggests that sometimes there is light hiding in the
darkest places. If we can figure out how to get our lanterns open, we can see it. Can you
find any hidden light in this dark tale?

THE BED AND BEDROOM

The bed in "The Tell-Tale Heart" symbolizes the opposite of what beds and bedrooms
should be about. The narrator violates all bedroom etiquette, by exploiting the
vulnerability of one who is sleeping. We are perhaps most vulnerable in bed, and we
sleep well when we feel safe in our bedrooms. Poe turns the symbol of the bed on its
head. The narrator uses the bed as weapon to snuff out the old man. And since the bed is
the murder weapon, it's logical that the bedroom is the burial place which is creepy.
INTERPRETATION
WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?
At the most obvious level, the title refers to the beating of the old man's heart. The
heart "tells tales" to the narrator. Tales, as you well know, are stories, and can be based on
either real or imagined events. In either case, tellers of tales want to keep the reader or
listener paying attention, and will often resort to extreme exaggerations to achieve that
goal.
So, what tales does the old man's heart tell? We first hear his heart beating on the
eighth night, when he realizes that something is not right in his room. His heart tells a tale
of fear, which in turn makes the narrator extremely angry and gives him the push he
needs to carry out his dastardly deed.
The next time we hear the beating of the heart is after the old man is dead. See,
this is part of why the narrator tells us he cut up the body before burying it under the
floorboards. If it wasn't for that step, we could imagine that the old man maybe wasn't
quite as dead as the narrator thought. Since that isn't a possibility, and since we know that

dead hearts don't beat, the narrator's own hidden guilt over the deed is projected onto the
dead man's heart, thus telling a tale of the narrator's guilty feelings.
So, the title also refers to the narrator's heart. Inside the heart is where our
deepest, truest feelings and emotions live, at least metaphorically speaking. We could
look at the whole story of the old man's murder as a tale told by the narrator, a tale from
his own heart. The title refers to both the narrator's heart, and to the old man's heart, and
to the tales told by both.
WHAT'S UP WITH THE ENDING?
As the Invisible Man, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man says, "The end [is] in the
beginning." As in that novel, chronologically speaking, the end of "The Tell-Tale Heart"
actually takes place before the beginning. We can look at this in several ways.
First, notice the structure of the narrator's tale. It's completely linear, following the
narrator's activities through eight nights. The beginning is a continuation of this linear
narrative, but perhaps it's a more immediate continuation than we might have thought.
Look how it seems to start in the middle of a previous conversation with someone: "True!
nervous very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I
am mad?"
Maybe this is what the narrator tells the police after he shows them the body.
Maybe this is part of the interrogation process, which is followed by the story of the
murder.

Or, maybe much more time passes before the narrator tells the tale. Suppose he
was sentenced to do his time in a psychiatric facility. He's been in a number of years, and
it's possible he'll be released, if he can prove his sanity. So he tells the story to
demonstrate that he's ready to face the outside word. Needless to say, the story would
have the opposite of the intended effect in this situation.
Some interesting things also occur in the literal ending of the story, by which we
mean these lines: "'Villains!' I shrieked, 'dissemble no more! I admit the deed! tear up
the planks! here!, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!'"
First, the narrator calls the police "villains," and accuses them of "dissembling."
Dissembling is pretty close to "dissimulation". Dissemblers and dissimulators both act
one way in order to conceal true feelings, or intentions. If you recall, the narrator cites his
ability to act sweetly to the old man while inwardly desiring to kill him as proof of his
sanity. Now he suspects the police of doing the same thing acting like they don't suspect
him, even though they do.
The narrator might well be correct in this, though what likely made the police
suspect him was not that they could hear what hears, but his own actions, specifically,
this: "I foamed I raved I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and
grated it upon the boards"
In any case, by calling the police "villains" for acting one way and feeling
another, the narrator admits that he too is a villain. By connecting his auditory
hallucinations with the old man's heart, he admits he actually feels bad about what he did,
or at least knows it's wrong. That sounds something like sanity, which might explain why

the narrator would end the story meant to prove his sanity with what, at first glance, looks
like a confession to murder.