Ojeda 1
Bianca Ojeda
Instructor: Vacca
English 2307
22 September 2014
WC: 1,011
Like Gravity
Madness is not black and white. It's a gray scale image that does not conform to standard
or typical mode of behavior. That's what makes it madness: a lack of regularity in the human
condition. In his short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart," Edgar Allen Poe explores the madness of
the narrator through the use of voice, imagery, and literary allusions. The narrator, having
concealed the dead body of a man he murdered in cold blood beneath the floor boards of his own
home, attempts to convince the reader of his own perfect sanity. This only makes him seem all
the more insane, which Poe conveys through these literary devices in particular.
In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator begins his story by assuring the reader that despite
his "nervous" nature, he was, and remains to be, completely sane. Starting out the story with such
assurances works counter intuitively, tipping the reader off to the fact that the narrator is most
likely not in his right mind. This is how Poe chooses to set the voice for the entire story, with the
narrator growing increasingly agitated throughout his retelling. But while remaining aware of the
narrator's apparent madness, the reader is also drawn in as an accomplice of sorts. By assuming
the readers own reactions, ("...you would have laughed..."), the narrator inserts the reader into the
tale as an "active voyeur" (Witherington). Poe also enforces other word choices throughout the
text, using the word "you" a grand total of 15 times. This effectively places the reader into the
story from beginning to end. It gives the sense that the reader is there in the room, standing
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beside the narrator as he peeks his head into the room, as he dismembers the body, as he speaks
with the officers that come to call. It is an effective way of engaging the reader in this
confession-like telling of the story. Everybody enjoys hearing a confession to some crime.
People flock to read news about serial killers. Hollywood romanticizes the manhunts involving
those mad murderers. Poe recognized this instinctual draw to madness even before it became
popularized by mainstream media and conveyed it best in this short story. By telling the tale not
through the eyes of an investigator, or even a bystander, Poe effectively places the reader in the
shoes of the serial killer by making him/her an accomplice to the act, all this achieved through
voice alone.
Another prominent feature in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is its literary allusions to
Shakespeare's Macbeth (McIlvaine). In that famous play, Lady Macbeth goes through a mental
breakdown pertaining to her guilt in the murder of the king, Duncan. Her most well-known line,
"Out, damned spot!" serves as the climax of her own soliloquy towards the peak of her madness,
where she hallucinates that her hands are still covered in blood, the symbol of her guilt. In Poe's
story, the narrator refers to the old man's eye as "the damned spot", which seems to be a
juxtaposition. When the police appear at the door, the narrator is less than phased. In fact, he is
absolutely smug, deciding to lead them into the very room he has concealed the body in for a
chat. While the phrase links the two texts together, the narrator's situation is almost a direct
negative of Lady Macbeth's. He feels no remorse whatsoever, and goes about concealing the
body in a manner that is eerily calm and self-assured. Robert McIlvaine, in A Shakespearean
Echo In The Tell-Tale Heart, points out another similarity: Lady Macbeth's horror at the blood
staining her hands, and the narrator's calm assertion that he had not spilled a drop of blood while
dismembering the body, suggesting that he "had learned from her experience." McIlvaine goes
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on to suggest that Shakespeare's influence had only been a subconscious one, and that all
similarities found between "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Macbeth were subconscious. While this
cannot be completely assumed, there are far too many similarities between the two texts to be so
coincidental. For instance, both Lady Macbeth and the narrator suffer from delusions that lead to
mental breakdowns. Both claim to have loved those that they killed. In fact, the only truly
striking difference between the pair is the fact that the narrator appears to have gone mad long
before committing the crime, whereas Lady Macbeth went mad after the fact.
In the end, they both suffer from their guilt. Though because the narrator is mad, his guilt
is manifested in a delusion that seems less to him like a guilty conscious and more realistic. So
much so that he even projects hallucinations onto the police, imagining that despite his extreme
agitation, they are smiling in "derision." He believes they are privy to his crime, his guilty
subconscious evidenced by their "hypocritical smiles." Despite his previous confidence that they
surely would not know that he murdered the old man, he's suddenly positive that "they knew!". It
goes beyond suspicion, despite all of his careful concealment. This coupled with the growing
sound of the ringing noise builds up the tempo of the story which before had been rather
methodical and slow. Just as madness is uncontrollable, so too is the story towards the end,
careening out of the narrator's grasp until he is all but forced by his own guilt to reveal the spot
where he had hidden the body. There is no denouement either, a small device Poe incorporates to
leave the reader with the feeling that they've jumped off a cliff alongside the narrator. Obviously,
the narrator would be arrested and thus his story would end, but the tale itself is ended in a very
non-stereotypical fashion. It ends on a climax, with the narrator screeching about "the beating of
his hideous heart!"
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Poe incorporates literary devices in unconventional ways that serve to pull the reader into
the story. By placing the reader beside the madman, Poe captures the attention of his audience,
and with subtle Shakespearean allusions and an ending that leaves the reader at the climax of the
story, he successfully portrays what it must truly mean to be mad.
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Works Cited
McIlvaine, Robert. "A Shakespearean Echo In The Tell-Tale Heart . American Notes &
Queries 15.3 (1976): 38. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
Poe, Edgar. The Selected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. London: Harper Press, 2011. Print.
Witherington, Paul. "The Accomplice In 'The Tell-Tale Heart'." Studies In Short Fiction 22.4
(1985): 471. Literary Reference Center. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.