The Tale Tell Heart

1. The Mental Psychology of The Main
Character in Edgar Allan Poe’s The
Tale Tell Heart
By Putri Rachmawati

2. Abstract
In this paper the writer tried to analyze “The
Tale Tell Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. The purpose of
this writing is to analyze major intrinsic and
extrinsic elements in the poem. Theories that used
are textual, contextual, and hyper textual by close
reading method. The writer found that this poem has
strong characters and is about the love and hate.
Keywords: The Tale Tell Heart, Edgar Allan Poe,
Characters, Love, Hate

3. 1. Introduction
“The Tale Tell Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe giving a
new perception between love and hate.
2. Methodology
Analyzing the characters in “The Tale Tell Heart”
Analyzing the close relation between love and hate
in “The Tale Tell Heart”
3. Research Object
The objects of research are sorted into a material and
formal object. Material object in this study is “The
Tale Tell Heart.”

4. Biography of Edgar Allan Poe
• Edgar Poe was born on 19 January 1809 in Boston,
Massachusetts, the son of actors Elizabeth Arnold
Hopkins and David. After the death of his parents
Edgar was taken in by Frances (d.1829) and John
Allan (d.1834), a wealthy merchant in Richmond,
Virginia.
• In 1820 he was back in Richmond where he attended
the University of Virginia and studied Latin and
poetry and also loved to swim and act. Unable to
pay them or support himself, Poe left school and
enlisted in the United States Army where he served
for two years. He had been writing poetry for some
time and in 1827 “Dreams”—Oh! That my young
life were a lasting dream!—first appeared in the
Baltimore North American, the same year his first
book Tamerlane and Other Poems was published, at
his own expense.

5. Summary of The StoryThe Tale Tell Heart
The narrator has an idea that he can't shake. He loves the old
man and has nothing against him. Except…his horrible eye,
which is "pale blue eye with a film over it". The narrator
hates the eye and decides to kill the old man to be free of it.
To that end, the narrator goes to the old man's room every
night at 12am, for seven days. Each night the narrator opens
the man's door and puts in a lantern (the kind they don't
make anymore, with panels that can be adjusted to release
more or less light). After the lantern, the narrator puts his
head through the doorway, extremely slowly, and then opens
the lantern so a tiny beam of light shines on the old man's
eye. Each night the old man doesn't open his eye, so the
narrator feels that he can't kill him.

6. On the eighth night, the old man hears the narrator at
the door and wakes up. The narrator hangs out there
in the dark for a long time, then, with a scream,
plunges into the totally dark room, opening the
lantern, and shining light on the old man's eye. The
narrator drags the old man, who has only screamed
once, off the bed, and then pulls the bed on top of
the man. When the narrator hears the man's heart
stop beating, he removes the bed and checks to make
sure the old man is really dead, which he is. So the
narrator cuts him up and hides his remains under the
floor.

7. Then three policemen come. A neighbor had
heard a scream and called them. The narrator says
he screamed while sleeping, and claims that the
old man is out of town. After convincing the cops
nothing bad is going down, the narrator brings
them into the old man's bedroom, and they all sit
down to chat. While they are all shooting the
breeze, the narrator starts hearing a terrible
ticking noise, which gets louder and louder until
the narrator freaks out, confesses, and points the
police to the old man's body, stating that the
sound is coming from the old man's heart.

8. Discussion
– Characters
• The Narrator
The narrator is such a wreck, it's hard not to feel sorry for
him. He's nervous , paranoid, and physically and mentally
ill. He doesn't know the difference between the "real" and
the "unreal," and seems to be completely alone and
friendless in the world. We suspect that he rarely sleeps.
He’s also a murder. He doesn't share his name, or any
other identifying characteristics. He wants us to know
what he did, but not where to find him.
The narrator's contention that he wants to kill the old man
simply to be free of the power of his eye. It would be very
difficult to leave the old man, and that killing him was the
only way to escape his eye.

9. Even under those circumstances, the narrator still
seems abnormal and frightening because seems to
enjoy spying on the old man for the eight nights
prior to the murder, as in these lines:
"I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To
think that there I was, opening the door, little by
little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or
thoughts." (paragraph 4)
The narrator said that he wants to kill the man for
partical reasons, but he go trough such an elaborate
and creepy process and he take such pleasure in
killing. So, the narrator have some cmplicated
mental in this story.

10. • The Old Man
The old man is even more of a mystery than the narrator,
because only from the narrator's skewed perspective. The
Old Man has money (the narrator shows the old man's
"treasures" to the police). He has a blue eye that the
narrator is afraid of, and which fits the description of
a corneal unclear. He is old, and that he is a fairly sound
sleeper.
According to the narrator, the old man suspects nothing
because the narrator was nice to the narrator before he
killed him. We can't prove the old man was not suspicious,
but because he leaves his bedroom door unlocked we can
assume it. We know the man isn't naturally trusting – he's
afraid of robbers. But, it seems he does trust the narrator
enough to give him the run of the house while he sleeps.
The immortality of love

11. Love and Hate
• Poe gives the psychological complexity of this
story. Poe, like Freud, interpreted love and hate as
universal emotions, thereby severed from the
specific conditions of time and space. Poe is often
considered a "Southern Gothic" author, that is, an
author whose work deals with issues and anxieties
over slavery in the southern United States. The
Gothic terror is the result of the narrator’s
simultaneous love for himself and hatred of his
rival. The story shows that love and hate are
inseparable and suggests that they may simply be
two forms of the most intense form of human
emotion.

12. The narrator loves himself, but when feelings of self-
hatred arise in him, he projects that hatred onto an
imaginary copy of himself. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
the narrator confesses a love for an old man whom he
then violently murders and dismembers. The narrator
reveals his madness by attempting to separate the
person of the old man, whom he loves, from the old
man’s supposedly evil eye, which triggers the
narrator’s hatred. This delusional separation enables
the narrator to remain unaware of the paradox of
claiming to have loved his victim.

13. Conclusion
• “The Tale Tell Heart” is a kind of horror story. The
characters used in this story are also really
supported the sense of horror that Edgar Allan Poe
wants to stated along the story. Edgar Allan Poe is
such a creative author because he can consistent
to hide the main character, even the reader cannot
idententfied and still asking who is the narrator/the
character “I” in the story?. Although Poe hides the
identity of the character, the story is clearly shows
the complex feeling in one person. The characters
perfectly building up the feeling of the story. After
reading this story, the reader will get feels the
sense of scary and creepy.

14. References
• http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/poestor
ies/themes.html
• http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/
telltale.html
• http://www.online-literature.com/poe/