The Tell Tale Heart
Author: Edgar Allen Poe
This is not a book, it’s a short story. And a short, short story at that, clocking in around nine pages or so. But it is typically cited as Poe’s most famous work. I read it because it’s October and it felt like the right vibe with Halloween around the corner.
The gist of the story is the narrator is trying to prove to us that he is not mad, by showing us how meticulously he is planning the murder of an old man who lives in his building. He actually likes the old man, but is repulsed by his one eye, which is blue and has a cloudiness to it. So every night for a week, the narrator pokes his head into the old mans room around midnight and watches him in silence. After a week, the narrator decides it is time to murder the old man. However this time he makes a slight noise and the old man wakes up, and demands to know who is there. The room is very dark, so the narrator simply stands unmoving at the door, still staring at the man. This lasts for at least an hour. The narrator begins to hear the mans heart beating louder and louder, and is forced to rush up to him and murder him because he is worried that the pounding of his heart will wake up neighbours and get him caught. The narrator murders the old man, then dismembers him and hides him under the floor panels. That same night, police come to the door saying neighbours called in a disturbance and would like to investigate. The narrator feels confident in his precision, so invites them up to the old mans room (where he lays dismembered) to talk about it. The police seem to think everything is ok, and don’t suspect the narrator. However, as the police talk amongst themselves in the room, the narrator begins to hear the heart of the old man beating again. It grows in volume until the narrator can’t bear it any longer. The story ends with the narrator yelling:
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
The old man actually yelled out when the narrator rushed at him to murder him, which is what would have alerted the neighbour’s, but the narrator was so preoccupied with the supposed pounding of the old mans heart, that he didn’t even notice it. Of course, the beating heart sound was likely his own that he was hearing, and the “eye” he was so obsessed with, was actually “I”, or his own heart/himself. In other words, though he tried to convince us he wasn’t mad, he was very clearly a madman.
There is a couple images of the book I found that I thought conveyed the creepiness of the story pretty well.
