The narrative situation in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". An illustration of the captivating effect

Essay , 2020 , 6 Seiten , Note: 1,3

Amerikanistik - Literatur

This paper focuses on the captivating effect of the autodiegetic narration and which significant differences would occur throughout "The Tell-Tale Heart", if the narrator would be outside the diegesis, not a part of the story world (also called heterodiegetic narration).

Therefore, the beginning starts with a closer interpretation of the narrator’s character and their motives to plan the crime. Furthermore, the historical and literary context of The Tell-Tale Heart contributes to the argumentation. Followed by the context, the term paper includes a brief analysis of mad narrators in fiction. All arguments contain the information of several secondary sources. The conclusion provides an overview over the crucial arguments made in the main body of the paper and ultimately combines the interpretations in a final statement.

The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is perhaps the most striking feature of the short story. Although the protagonist declares his sanity right in the beginning of the story, the reader before long learns about the evident mental illness of the narrator. After all, their insanity and madness result in the murder of the old man. It is the feeling of paranoia, surveillance and nervousness that ultimately leads to the crime. The protagonist, however, evidently cannot be trusted and appears more and more unreliable. So what is merely imagination and what is truly genuine in The Tell-Tale Heart?

The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is perhaps the most striking feature of the short story. Although the protagonist declares his sanity right in the beginning of the story, the reader before long learns about the evident mental illness of the narrator. After all, their insanity and madness result in the murder of the old man. It is the feeling of paranoia, surveillance and nervousness that ultimately leads to the crime. The protagonist, however, evidently cannot be trusted and appears more and more unreliable. So what is merely imagination and what is truly genuine in The Tell-Tale Heart ?

The role of the narrator is of major significance in the story: Due to the unreliability of the protagonist, the first-person narration (also called autodiegetic narration) is highly dubious. The distance between the reader and the narrator becomes invisible and therefore nonexistent: the murder is not only committed by the protagonist but also by the reader. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a deeply psychological short story whose purpose would fail to intrigue and fascinate the audience if it would have been written in a heterodiegetic narration.

This midterm paper focuses on the captivating effect of the autodiegetic narration and which significant differences would occur throughout The Tell-Tale Heart if the narrator would be outside the diegesis, not a part of the story world (also called heterodiegetic narration). Therefore, the beginning starts with a closer interpretation of the narrator’s character and their motives to plan the crime. Furthermore, the historical and literary context of The Tell-Tale Heart contributes to the argumentation. Followed by the context, the term paper includes a brief analysis of mad narrators in fiction. All arguments contain the information of several secondary sources. The conclusion provides an overview over the crucial arguments made in the main body of the paper and ultimately combines the interpretations in a final statement.

At fist sight it seems that The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story about an insane protagonist who tells the tale of their murder of the old man with the “Evil Eye” (Poe 413) but after a closer examination of the narration there is indeed a deeper significance to be found. First and foremost, the reason for the murder is the “Evil Eye” (ibid.) of the old man who lives with the protagonist. But before the crime, the narrator develops an “irrational obsession” (Zimmermann 40) with the allegedly strange eye of the man. To not feel the paranoia and surveillance of the stare of the eye any longer, they cunningly plan the killing of the eye and in addition, the old man (cf. Poe 413). There are several emotional involvements which lead to the disgust of the eye. Fear and hatred combine the motivations behind the eventual murder. The protagonist “grew furious” (414) when they see the eye open and gaze back at them. However, not a solely furious animosity is inflicted by the “Evil Eye” (413) but the narrator reacts also with a “chilled [feeling to] the marrow in [their] bones” (414) which further indicates anxiety and distress. After the disembodying of the old man, the protagonist is still plagued by the persecution mania and their nervous condition worsens. Thus, their paranoia ends in the confession of the killing (cf. Poe 416).

While the story is one of confession and justification, it just as well concentrates on guilt and identification. “It should be noted that Poe speaks only of a single eye” (Tucker 94) and therefore the eye is possible to be a homonym for the first-person pronoun I. Consequently, the protagonist does not solely murder the old man and the “Evil Eye” (Poe 413) but “[their] own doppelganger” (Tucker 93) or even more likely a part of themselves. A further indication of the identification with the old man is implied by the narrator because “[they] know what the old man felt” (Poe 414) and “[they have a] feeling [of] the old man’s terror . . . [as] if it were [their] own” (Tucker 93). They try to kill their anxious part, the part of them that feels nervousness and paranoia in an acuteness seldom felt by a sane human being. The kill of their insane part can be a further implication of a justification, of a possible outcome of sanity. They murder the I that clings to emotions of terror and surveillance, of nervousness and fear. All these things considered, they can believe in their final pardon or an eventual sane mind after the kill of their insane part, even though the narrator does not once admit their madness. Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic short story can be interpreted in various ways but to further argument on the effect of the narrative situation, it is efficient to place The Tell-Tale Heart in a short literary context.

Gothic fiction, and Edgar Allan Poe’s short story is part of this literature period, draws on the idea of the mystery, the unknown which causes fear but is anomalous as well. The literary movement is a countermovement to “the rationalism of the Enlightenment period” (Ilott 333) and concentrates on “fragmentation of the self, social decline and monstrosity” (Ilott 333). Poe confirms the effect of the monstrosity and the otherness by the use of “a Gothic narrative, [that] intensifies the fatalistic impression that the reader is trapped and circumscribed by the role created for them in the story” (Ilott 334). All the madness of the first-person narrator leaks out of the pages and into the reader. “The predetermination and foreshadowing evoked by the claustrophobic short story form reinforce the tale’s Gothic effects” (Ilott 335) and the beginning of The Tell-Tale Heart adds even more to the fact of the unknown which is so beloved in Gothic tales. The story starts in medias res, the reader is immediately pulled in the plot without any further information as to the before of the action (cf. Ilott 334). The “opening sentence creates an impression of urgency and anxiety” (Ilott 334) and it is the effect of such emotions that keep the reader fully captivated in the story. There is no way to escape the madness of the narrator because “by the mode of address, the reader becomes a further recipient, uncomfortably confronted with a madman who is a self-confessed killer” (Ilott 335) . Hence, the literary context offers additional background information on The Tell-Tale Heart which are efficacious to explain the theoretic difference of the narration in Edgar Allan Poe’s. Thus, the narration of The Tell-Tale Heart is of great significance for the effect of the story as a Gothic tale. Additionally, the clarification of the narrative situation is another argument for the given thesis.

Lars Bernearts, Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck state in their book Narrative Threads of Madness that “Madness thus turns out to be a performer or a rhetorical figure rather than an essential property of a character’s mind” (284). In fiction, an insane narrator occurs as an unreliable figure that is not to be trusted but madness in a protagonist can also have its appeal for an author. Frequently, in fiction insanity is portrayed as “more than “just” a represented state of mind” (Bernearts et al. 284). To once more refer back to the literary context: “Madness has turned out to be a rich and many-layered concept” (Bernearts et al. 285) for example, in the epoch of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. To further reject the Enlightenment values of reason and science, the period of Romanticism (and Poe’s short story can be classified as a part of Romantic literature) puts emphasis on the artistic movements. “Insanity . . . also brings in fundamental concepts such as the creative imagination, genius, and the binary pair blindness/insight” (Bernearts et al. 285) and therefore, “[is] always connected with considerations of creative and literary production” (ibid.). A narrative situation where the protagonist is evidently insane, similar to the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart persuade “the reader . . . to ask all sorts of questions that not only enhance [their] interest in the text, but that also force [them] to focus on the textual strategies: Is this story world a mental projection? Is the main character really mad? How will his or her madness develop and affect the course of the events?” (286). These questions will forever be left unsolved, due to the fact that solely Edgar Allan Poe knew the answer to them. However, the illumination of the narrative situation in relation to madness has contributed to the conclusion of the thesis.

A sequitur from the term paper is the fact that Edgar Allan Poe deliberately choose the first-person narration. The effect of the autodiegetic narrative situation captivates the reader, fascinates and on the contrary, horrifies and offends the readership. If the story would have been told by a heterodiegetic narrator, it would fail to shock and disgust as it does accomplish through the autodiegetic narrative situation. The Tell-Tale Heart has such a strong aberrant appeal that it would lose its captivating effect if the reader would not immediately be pulled into the story world. The insane narrator is what ultimately defines The Tell-Tale Heart as a Gothic and Romantic short story and a narrator outside of the diegesis would lessen to capture the readers imagination and attention. In conclusion, Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart is a deeply admired work of American Gothic fiction altogether because of its mad protagonist and the narrative situation is in equal parts responsible for its prominence.

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• Hochschule: Universität Hamburg
• Note: 1,3
• Autor: Kaja Schlothauer (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2020
• Seiten: 6
• Katalognummer: V1005192
• ISBN (eBook): 9783346406750
• Sprache: Englisch
• Schlagworte: tell-tale, heart