"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Love in Edgar Allan Poe's Life

It is often said that a writer's love life has a great impact on his or her literary works. For instance, the famous German writer Goethe had many love affairs, and his lovers are said to have influenced a lot of his writings, such as "The Sorrows of Young Werther." The same was probably true for Edgar Allan Poe, who was famous for his love for a thirteen-year-old wife.

Love and Hatred in "The Tell-Tale Heart"

There are many different interpretations of "The Tell-Tale Heart," and all of them are very much plausible. Some people say that the old man does not exist in reality but rather is imagined by the narrator. Others say that the narrator loves the old man and the sound of the beating heart represents the guilt inside the narrator's mind.

I find the latter interpretation more reasonable. He says "I loved the old man." Perhaps he has come to hate the old man through some sort of incident. There must have been something other than the "evil eye" that triggers his anger because he says "I think it was his eye! yes, it was this!" as if he is making an excuse for hating him. The same is true for the narrator in "The Cask of Amontillado" who repeats that his friend has insulted him but never actually describes how. It is probably that he has never been insulted but that he is merely making excuses.

At the end, the narrator hearts the beating of the heart. Is this sound from the old man's heart of his own? I think both cases are plausible. The sound could have been from his own heart, but the narrator might have deluded himself into thinking that it was coming from the old man. Either way, it reveals his guilt about the murder. In "The Black Cat," the narrator gives himself away to the police in a similar way. This will be discussed in more detail in the comparison of the three short stories.

"The Tell-Tale Heart ," "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado"

These three short stories of Poe have many things in common. (The titles of the stories are shortened as "TH" "BC" and "CA"

First of all, they are all told in first-person point of view, and the state of the narrators' mental condition is under question. At the beginning of the story the narrators try to tell the readers how sane they are, but their actions indicate that they are far from sane.

Secondly, their motive for killing is rather unclear. In "TH," the narrator claims that he wants to kill the old man because of his "evil eye." In "BC," it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision to kill the cat. In "CA," the narrator claims that his friend Fortunado has insulted him many times, but the reader cannot determine whether there was such an insult.

Thirdly, the process of killing and concealing is very organized in all three cases. In the case of "BC," the murder was not planned but concealing the body in the basement was highly organized. In "CA" the narrator allures his friend into the catacombs. He has planned very thorougly, asking his family to leave the house on the day of his murder. In "TH" as we know, the narrator is extremely cautious in killing the old man.

Lastly, all the narrators feel guilty about their murder and two of them give themselves away to the police.