36 pages • 1 hour read
Edgar Allan PoeThe Tell-Tale Heart
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1843A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Body Parts: Eyes and Heart
The body plays a central role in “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The murder is inspired by the old man’s eye and is purportedly solved by his heart. Additionally, the murder itself takes the form of dismemberment.
The eyes are traditionally considered windows to the soul, but they also allow people to observe and interact with the surrounding world. In this story the eye could represented the ability to think rationally. The narrator’s obsession with the old man’s eye and its subsequent suggest that they have lost their ability to reason.
The heart is often interpreted as a symbol of a person’s ability to feel emotions, such as love. Thus, it could be seen as a representation of morality. Right before the murder, the narrator hears a loud heartbeat and assumes it is the old man’s. This could mean the protagonist’s rational or moral side is trying to stop the crime. However, the narrator kills the source of the heartbeat, symbolically destroying their better nature. At the end, balance is re-established when either the heart begins beating loudly once more, allowing the crime to be solved and the criminal punished. In the end, the murderer’s faulty logic and rationality are defeated by the return of morality.
Sound and Silence
While the story is an act of oral communication (signaled by the word “hearken” in Paragraph 1), the details of the narrator’s life create a sense of silence and solitude. The house is described as “black as pitch with the thick darkness” and with “dreadful silence” (Paragraphs 4, 11). The murderer does not seem to have a social life outside the house and is not close to anyone except the old man. The only reported conversations are the brief morning interactions between the narrator and the old man. Consequently, the narrator’s paranoia and night terrors remain unobserved and undetected. This suggests that socialization could have prevented a full descent into madness, or at least prevented the crimes committed due to mental deterioration.
This makes the sounds that interrupt the habitual silence even more noteworthy. These include the creaking of the lantern, the old man’s moan, and the heartbeat. All these sounds heighten the tension and add verisimilitude to the narrative. Additionally, the heartbeat is what gives away the murder.
Light and Vision
Traditionally, especially in Western culture, light is seen as something positive, while darkness is interpreted as negative. In this story the dark house becomes the site of a terrible crime, but the horror of darkness is not offset by light. On the contrary, the narrator uses artificial light from a lantern to advance their plan and to ultimately choose the time to commit murder. The way the narrator uses light is blinding, as they shine it suddenly onto an open eye surrounded by darkness. Thus, while light symbolized discovery and liberty during the Enlightenment, here it serves a destructive function.
Furthermore, the single ray of light illuminates only a small part of the old man, enabling the narrator to dissociate the single eye from the rest of the person. Focusing on one body part precludes the ability to see the entire person. In this way, the function of light—knowledge and understanding—is subverted to serve the denial of knowledge.
Related Titles
By Edgar Allan Poe
