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Read more key facts about Poe’s writing, including about his frequent use of unreliable narrators. A summary of “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) in Edgar Allan Poe's Poe’s Short Stories. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Poe’s Short Stories and what it means.
A short summary of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Tell-Tale Heart.
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“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1843. It is about a murderer who tries to persuade his readers of his mental stability while telling the tale of the brutish act. He denies that he suffers from some mental illness and openly boasts of his cleverness and cunning behavior. He kills an old man though he loves him. He hold...
At the start of the story, the narrator is answering an imaginary listener. He confesses that he has been ill but denies the fact that he is insane. Furthermore, he announces that the illness has given him more strength especially to his “sense of hearing”. He tells the imaginary listener that he is more vigilant now and is able to hear everything....
Mental Health
Poe’s story shows its readers the importance of mental health. The story demonstrates that mental illness can drive a person to the vilest acts. Psychological problems can lead individuals to act dangerously without any motive. The narrator, in the story, suffers from some mental problems which lead to his destruction. He, time and again, denies the fact that he suffers from mental illness but his awkward actions prove that he suffers from some psychological problem. He is obsessed with killi...
Guilt
Guilt is another significant theme in the story. Although the narrator does not feel guilty of his crime openly, however, it is his guilty conscience which leads him to confess his crime. At first, he murders the old man in his room and calmly hides his dead body underground. Then he calmly receives the policemen and leads them across the house. However, in the hearts of his heart, he feels nervous with the passage of time. Slowly and gradually, he hears sounds which he did not hear previousl...
Confinement
The theme of confinement is central to the story. The actions in the story are confined to a house only. Neither the narrator nor the old man go outside the house throughout the story. The narrator wants to break this confinement by murdering the old man but is unsuccessful. He murders the old man but never breaks his confinement. The narrator thinks he will escape the life of confinement by killing the old man who is a threat to his freedom, according to him, but never succeeds. Instead, aft...
Characters are people who have some individual traits in a piece of writing. Without characters, a piece of literature looks dull. They are mouthpieces for a writer through which a writer expresses their opinions about a particular issue. Characters provide them with an outlet to contribute to the social structure. Some characters are major charact...
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story poses many questions to be answered by the readers. The reality of the narrator, the motive behind his murder, his relationship with the old man, and the issues of his mental and physical health are to be discussed in this analysis section. The narrator is an unreliable person having no specific name. Even we do not kn...
A classic Poe story about a murderer who kills an old man for his vulture-like eye and hides the body parts. The narrator confesses his crime to the policemen and reveals his guilty conscience and paranoia.
Poe uses his words economically in the “Tell-Tale Heart”—it is one of his shortest stories—to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. Poe strips the story of excess detail as a way to heighten the murderer’s obsession with specific and unadorned entities: the old man’s eye, the heartbeat, and his own claim to sanity.
Apr 27, 2017 · Learn about the plot, themes, and literary devices of Poe's classic Gothic story of a murderer haunted by his victim's heart. Discover how Poe uses doubling, irony, and psychological horror to create suspense and terror.
Summary and analysis. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1843, that delves into the dark recesses of the human mind. The tale, narrated in the first person, follows a protagonist who insists on his sanity as he tells the events surrounding his cohabitation with an older man. The story centers on the narrator ...
