How Effective Is Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart as a Gothic Horror Essay

‘How effective is Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell Tale’ Heart’ as a gothic horror? ’ The short story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. It is written in first person in the past tense. The story opens in the middle of what seems to be a dialogue between the narrator and his audience. We learn that the narrator looks after an old man with a pale blue eye; he describes it as being like that of a ‘vulture’. We are told that the eye disturbs the narrator, for this reason the narrator decides to take the old man’s life. During the seven days before the murder, the speaker is extremely kind to his victim in the day time. However, in the night he would creep into the old man’s room awaiting the appearance of the ‘Evil’ eye. On the eighth night the old man wakes up, the eye causes the narrator to suddenly lash out and kill the old man. He ‘dismembers’ the corpse and stores it under the floor boards. The police visit his house due to a shriek heard by a neighbour. At first he is calm and sure of himself, but becomes increasingly nervous and seems to go insane. The narrator admits his crime to the police even though they have no apparent suspicions. The dark and mysterious setting of Poe’s story is typical of a gothic horror. We learn from early on that the narrator is actually the villain. He speaks directly to the reader, creating a personal bond which we do not share with any other character. We know very little about the victim which prevents us from empathising with him later on in the story. The narrator is a very complex character, he seems to have a distorted view of the world around him and we assume him to be mad. Madness is a popular theme of gothic horror and one of the reasons the story is so effective is because of the erratic way in which it is told. Some events of the tale seem to be unrealistic and this adds mystery to the horror. The main event of the tale, the murder, is also common in the gothic horror genre. Because of these links to a general tale of gothic horror, I believe Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ is very effective. Within the first paragraph I get the impression that the speaker is mad and disturbed. He accuses the audience of thinking he is mad by saying ‘why will you say that I am mad? This causes us to question his sanity because he has no reason to say this. Now that the theme of madness is fresh in our heads, as we continue to read the story the idea that the narrator is ‘mad’ comes to mind easily. I get the impression that he is insecure and possibly knows he is insane because he’s trying to persuade us otherwise. The narrator speaks at a very fast pace using disjointed sentences such as, ‘True! -nervous-very, very dreadfully nervous! ’ The vast amount of punctuation makes this sentence choppy and slow to read causing you to trip over what he is saying. This manner of dialogue reflects his frantic personality. Also, the narrators distorted view of things reinforces the horror genre. We assume that he has a distorted view because he expresses his ‘love’ for the old man yet soon explains his wishes to take his life. There is a paradox in this situation and shows us how scrambled his thoughts are. The idea of the narrator not thinking straight and being irrational excites the audience. It also adds to the effectiveness of the gothic horror. When I first read ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ I felt eager to find out the narrator’s later actions. This backs up my earlier idea of both the story and narrator being extremely effective as a gothic horror. When the speaker tells us he is going to ‘take the old man’s life’ our opinion of him changes. We begin to realise that he could be evil and cold hearted. He makes it clear that the old man has ‘never wronged’ him, this is strange because this would make the only reason for murder the man’s ‘diseased’ eye. This seems extremely unnecessary and cruel; this behaviour has a great link with gothic horror. Also, it is frightening to think that such a defect could motivate a murder. Suspense is built when the narrator rehearses the actions that lead up to the murder for seven nights. This suggests that he is incredibly meticulous. He is a perfectionist and is repeating his intended actions to ensure all runs smoothly. We could also get the impression that he is fearful of killing the old man. I think that he uses the fact that the eye isn’t open as an excuse not to kill the old man, he says ‘but I found the eye always to be closed; and so it was impossible to do the work’. This in fact, is a lie. It would have been much simpler to murder the old man whilst he was sleeping. When the narrator creeps into his room at night he is very slow and quiet. This ensures that he doesn’t see the eye and therefore doesn’t get enraged. This situation is extremely disturbing, it seems warped that the narrator would have such ruthless ideas but then be unable to follow them through. The speaker proudly tells us that in the day he treats the old man with courtesy and respect. In a way, this tells me that he is not a completely evil character; merely controlled by his impulses. On the other hand it could be perceived as the narrator being a good actor and sly. By being devious and two faced about the situation our opinion of the character changes. This is creepy because he is unpredictable; we are never quite sure when things are going to happen. On the eighth night, the narrator was more than usually cautious when entering the old man’s room. This immediately raises our suspicions and we begin to question why he has done this. It suggests that for some reason the narrator was apprehensive on that particular night. In the end, his over-cautiousness was his downfall because he accidently wakes the old man. This is disturbing because now the man is awake we assume that the murder will now take place. In the immediate build up to the murder the narrator describes in great depth what the old man is thinking. This implies to me that the speaker has experienced similar situations and can associate with the old man. It also could suggest that the narrator’s senses have been sharpened, as he tells us in the first paragraph: ‘the disease had sharpened my senses’. It gives us the idea that the narrator can tell what the old man is thinking. Hints of mind reading enhance the effect of this gothic horror because they are supernatural. Even though the old man wakes up, the darkness in the building gives the narrator confidence and adds to the effectiveness of the gothic horror. Darkness is often directly linked with evil and also the idea that anything can happen definitely adds to the tension and horror. Also, the possibility that if the old man hadn’t woken up, the cycle of the narrator watching the man sleep could have carried on forever is extremely creepy. The fact that we feel for the murderer more than the victim in this story is very strange. We would expect to pity the old man because we are told he is kind and has never ‘wronged’ the narrator. The fact he has a strange eye cannot be helped and is through no fault of his own. Although the reader is obviously shocked by what happens to the old man, there is no personal relationship between him and the reader because we know very little about him. I think that Edgar Allen Poe has done this on purpose so that we are more attached to the murderer, which is what makes this story particularly unusual. Moments before the narrator kills the old man, he claims to hear his heart beating. It is impossible to ‘hear’ someone else’s heart beat with human hearing so this is an extremely weird claim. A possible explanation for this is that the narrator is hearing his own heart due to nervousness. At the start of the story the narrator says that his hearing is extremely acute due to the ‘disease’. The fact that he uses the word ‘disease’ suggests that this extra hearing is a burden to him. This is true because he probably doesn’t want to hear the old man’s heartbeat. The motif of the heart beat is key to the story because, as shown by the title, it eventually is the undoing of the murderer. The imagery is also very scary and builds a great tension because we imagine the drumming of the heart in our heads. Eventually the speaker is driven to action by fear and kills the old man. This brutal murder is key to the story being classed as a gothic horror. We realise that he cares if anyone finds out about his deed and begin to understand that he is not genuinely insane; otherwise he wouldn’t have a perspective of people finding out and being prosecuted. His mind is hard to analyse because he is clever and obviously knows what he is doing. In a way this is more horrific that him being insane because it shows deep evil. Even though we can tell that the murderer is intelligent, the way he kills the old man is extremely clumsy. Suffocating him with a ‘heavy’ bed? Surely there are many less awkward, quieter ways in which he could have killed him? The idea that even an everyday item such as a bed can be used a murder weapon is extremely creepy. His method suggests that even though he is meticulous, he didn’t think enough about actually killing the old man. The narrator’s immediate response to the murder was that of pleasure; this is disturbing. As soon as the deed was done he ‘smiled gaily’. Also, the first thing he says is that ‘his eye would trouble me no more’; it’s like he is relieved. Normally I would be surprised by this guilt free response but by now it is unsurprising. We are familiar with the narrator’s lack of feeling and conscience. It is questionable why the narrator ‘dismembers’ the old man’s body. It is strange because as far as we know the narrator only has a problem with his eye. It could have been an act of precaution, even though this is unnecessary. Maybe the narrator saw it as a challenge? If this is true the idea of the narrator almost playing a game adds to the horror of the tale. We can tell that the narrator never saw the old man as a person, more of an object. Another possible reason could be that, because the narrator is so fastidious, he wanted everything to be neat and compact. This is very risky though because you would assume it would be a messy job. The narrator says there was no mess; could this once again be a distorted view of things? As the narrator goes about his gruesome task (dismembering the body) his tone of voice is very methodical and boastful. This suggests he is calm about the gory situation which is horrible. He does not elaborate the gore and we get the impression he is being very clean. We also get the impression that he is proud of his actions and the fact he has caught all the blood and prevented any possible mess. His tone has an effect on the reader; it dumbs down how disgusting his act is. He achieves this by not making a big deal of the details. The narrator’s initial response to the arrival of the policemen is fearless and vaguely smug. This creates an uneasy mood because we wonder if he will be found out. He ‘bade(s) the gentlemen welcome’ as if nothing is wrong. He is so confident he sits right above the spot where the old man is buried. This seems to be unnecessarily arrogant, which in the end is his own undoing. His attitude changes when the officers hang around for a long time; the narrator begins to feel they are mocking him. A lot of tension builds here because we can sense that something important is going to happen through the frantic situation. Tension is built up when the narrator begins to hear the heart beat again and believes the policemen can hear it too. This is physically impossible because the old man is definitely dead. Maybe it’s the murderer’s guilty conscience finally showing through! He starts pacing back and forth with ‘heavy strides’ but the heartbeat doesn’t stop. The tension continues to build as he raves and swears. He ‘swung the chair’ and ‘grated it upon the boards’. This is extremely horrific and it is even stranger that the policeman don’t seem to pay any attention. I think that his ravings may have been in his head but it’s hard to understand because of his distorted frantic view of everything. These hints of insanity constantly link back to the effectiveness of this gothic horror. I believe that this is a brilliant short story and I especially like the ending. It is unpredictable and exciting; not all of your questions are answered in the story and this makes your carry on thinking after you’ve finished reading. I wonder what happened to the murderer, and the heart beating still puzzles me. In conclusion, I believe that ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allen Poe is an excellent gothic horror. It contains many key features of a good horror, the biggest being the narrator/murderer who is the mean part of the story. Also, the main event, the murder, definitely is pivatel to the gothic horror genre.