It is a horror story, and a psychological thriller, which is presented in a native style. It is narrated by a mad man who commits homicide. The short story is a psychological portrait. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” is one of Edger Allan Poe’s well known short stories and was first published in January, 1843. When he finally kills the old man, he claims that the old man’s “hour had come.” Sound also contributes to this theme.What single effect on predominant emotion do you think, Poe aims to create in The TELL HEART? What means does Poe use to create this symbolism or atmosphere? Show the different feelings and emotions or effects that occur at the climax. He catalogues exactly how much time he spends watching the old man before the murder. Time: Time is a consistent theme and motif throughout the story. This heartbeat can be interpreted not as guilt, but as the narrator’s heightened awareness of his mortality and terror that he will eventually die just as the old man did.

At this point, the police come to the house, and the sound of the heartbeat fills his head. Then, the narrator begins to feel physical symptoms of disease. Once he murders the old man, time seems to stop for him as he loses track of it: he conflates hours and stops focusing on the ticking of clocks. He hears “death-beetles” in the walls and appears obsessed with time. The way in which he describes the “vulture-eye” and the old man suggests his fixation on the man’s age and frailty. The narrator’s insistence that he is sane and the old man’s eye is at fault suggests that the narrator does not regret his action he blames the murder on external forces that he could not control.įear of Mortality: Another reading of the story claims that the narrator kills the old man and confesses because of his own fear of mortality. At the beginning of the story, the narrator disassociates himself from the crime, claiming that an invisible force acted on him. However, this reading of his confession is incongruous with his character. In this reading, the narrator finally confesses his crime because his guilt grows so great that he can no longer hold it in.

Critics have interpreted the sound of the beating heart as the narrator’s guilty conscious reminding him of his deed. Guilt: “The Tell-Tale Heart” is conventionally read as a moralizing story about guilt and innocence.

The tell tale heart meaning