Poe's Psychological Thriller, "The Tell-tale Heart"
Edgar Allan Poe remains a popular writer today because he crafted horror stories that operate on us from the inside out. In others words, he created dramatic stories that begin in the mind and work on us psychologically. With Poe, we often find characters that are unstable or completely mad and this aspect is one tool that he utilizes to create fear and terror. One short story that demonstrates this powerful psychological impact is "The Tell-tale Heart." Poe takes us on a journey filled with fear and terror that takes place in the mind of the narrator. Poe also employs another component to create this psychological thriller, which is the narrator's madness. The element of madness becomes a central part of the story because it is up to us to discern whether or not the narrator is indeed mad. The story builds into a crescendo of terror and madness with the old man's beating heart and the narrator's bizarre behavior. The narrator fails to consider the law of unintended consequences and thus does not count on the sound of beating heart and his own guilt, which drive him over the edge of sanity. With "The Tell-tale Heart," Poe illustrates how our worst fears often exist within the boundaries our own minds, thus demonstrating h
By taking us into the mind of the narrator, Poe is giving us something dreadful to fear, which is ourselves. Jack Sullivan claims that Poe "revolutionized the horror tale, endowing it with new psychological insight and consistency of tone and atmosphere" (Sullivan 323). With "The Tell-tale Heart," the atmosphere and tone create fear and terror because we are forced to look at an unattractive side of mankind--namely a murdering madman, which could very well be our next door neighbor or co-worker. Jay Parini puts it succinctly when he states, that quite a few of Poe's stories are "tales of intrusion--whether culmination in the act of violent murder or in the psychological violation of another person or in describing the internal war of the divided self" (Parini 269). "The Tell-tale Heart" contains "internalized elements of anxiety and fear pushed to an unrelenting extreme" (269). The narrator's angst operates with our fear to produce a sense of fear that escalates as the story progresses. Michael Burduck observes that Poe explores the domains of "pain, decay, and terror" to "enlighten the dark tunnels of human life" (Burduck 102). One of those dark tunnels can be the fact that the narrator admits that he loves the old man. He says, "I loved the old man. He never wronged me. He had never given me insult" (Poe 189). In this sense, we see how Poe "prefers to scare his audience from within" (Burdock 105). Again, we see how Poe creates fear in our minds with the notion that someone could kill a person he or she loves. ow a psychological thriller operates. G. R. Thompson supports this theory adding that Poe is a: "The Tell-tale Heart" proves to be a masterpiece when it comes to being a psychological thriller. With this tale, he manages to fill us with fear from the inside. He does this primarily through the inner dialogue of the narrator, who proves to be unstable and unreliable. As we have learned, Poe's characters can be "troubled and highly motivated by subjective demons" (Parini 263). This is indeed the case with "The Tell-tale Heart." Poe only needs to open up the mind of the narrator to invite us into to his realm of madness. His mood, tone, and attitude operate together to create a monster. His interior monologue forces us to look at the seedy side of humanity. To intensify this fact, the narrator if this story does not believe that he is mad and goes out of his way to prove that he is sane. His story is tight, his facts are straight, and he skillfully pulls off his murderous plan. However, the narrator did not consider the law of unintended consequences, which, in his case, was the old man's beating heart. The indication t
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Approximate Word count = 1804
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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