The Unstoppable Heartbeat

The Tell-Tale Heart

In the short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator, which calls himself mad, gets a cold, sharp feeling when he looks at an old man's eye, which he also calls "vulture eye". The narrator decides to kill the man in order to get rid of that terrible eye and the cold feeling he gets from such, so he visits the man while he sleeps for seven consecutive nights during midnight, waiting for the eye to open; on the eight night, the old man wakes up and the narrator is able to kill him and hide the body, while he did, he heard the man's heartbeat slowly disappear. Police officers came hours later to the old man's house, and the narrator, with all the confidence in the world, lets them in and talks to them; but as the police officers were still there, the mad narrator started hearing the man's heartbeat again, louder and louder each time, obligating the narrator to confess his act of murder. 

Imagery and Characters

Edgar Allan Poe uses a lot of imagery in order to paint a picture in the reader's mind. For 
example, 

Now I could hear a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. I tried to stand quietly. But the sound grew louder. The old man’s fear must have been great indeed. And as the sound grew louder my anger became greater and more painful. (4)


This example of imagery connects to our sense of sound, using phrases such as "heard through a wall" and by showing us the narrator reacted to the sound he heard as "the beating of the old man’s heart". You can imagine a clock-like sound haunting the narrator.


The protagonist of this short story is the narrator, which says he's mad (well, he kind of is). Through indirect characterization, we can tell the personality of this important character. For example,

Yes. He was dead! Dead as stone! (3)

This demonstrates to the readers that the narrator has a negative effect on people or objects that he dislikes. In this example, the narrator killed the old man because he did not like and did not want to see the old man’s eye again.

Another good example of indirect characterization is when the author shows us through the narrator's action of killing the man his vulture eye with him, that this protagonist does not think twice before doing some sort of action, and that the narrator is very straight in his decisions.

Final Thoughts

This short story is amazing, mysterious in some sort and the message talks a lot about the theme, guilt. We should always try to not hide your mistakes or bad actions because we will then feel guilty, it is better to confess or just avoid bad actions and think twice before doing something. Thanks to the strong imagery, which gave pictures in my head, and the great form of describing the mad narrator, this short story was awesome and I enjoyed reading it.