The Tell-Tale Heart

by Edgar Allen Poe

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

The Tell-Tale Heart is a story about an unnamed person who insists on their sanity after murdering an old man with an evil eye. The murder was cold, calculated and well executed, the body disposed; but the guilt slowly eats away at the person.

The story uses an unreliable narrator very effectively; driving the story without giving too much away, to keep it tense. The narrator is genderless though most people assume he’s a man, it could just as easily been a woman. The way the story is written, you can see the narrator slowly self-destructing; starting by insisting that they are innocent and sane.

I noticed Edgar Allan Poe seems to italicise words throughout the story – though some versions of the story put the words in uppercase. I gather it is done to add emphasis on the words but there is another reason why Poe used to do this. Poe used to italicise words that were foreign or words he thought he had made up or found another way to use the word.

The Tell-Tale Heart is a classic chiller and well executed to keep the reader feeling on edge. I’m glad I read it and it has given me some ideas on my current WIP.