The Telll-Tale Heart : Reading Response

Brianna Blackmon                                                                                   EN 102

Sept 12. 2014                                                                                       Prof. Corona

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

2.  The two controlling symbols in the story are the eye and the heart. What is their significance in the story? Why do you think the author makes them so prominent?

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe’s consists of many different symbols. The heart and the eye are more like one when you indulge in this short story. It was the old man’s pale blue eye with a veil over it that gave the narrator the initiative to kill the old man. Whenever this “dull blue eye with a hideous veil over” it, fell upon the narrator his blood ran cold. The narrator describes the old man’s eye as creepy and strange as if it has some sort of superpower. The “Evil Eye” had film or a veil over it which could indicate that the old man had a disease, possibly an ulcer, which makes it hard for one to see, which could also indicate unreliability, obscured vision or in this case death.  In the beginning of the story the eye is referred to as the eye of a vulture quite a few times. The narrator even suggests that the old man had never done him wrong, but it was his eye that was evil. Vultures prey on the dead, sick or weak. The narrator symbolizes the old man as vulture-like according to his eye and how the evil eye makes him feel, although the old man had done nothing wrong.

          The heart in this piece by Poe is somewhat like the eye’s bodyguard. As the narrator attempts to enter the old man’s room as he had done many nights before, he lets out just enough light from the lantern, which happened to fall on the “vulture eye”.  Out of terror the old man’s heart begins to beat “like a drum that stimulates a soldier into courage”. In the narrators attempt to enter the old man’s bed room, he notices the heart beat growing quicker and louder. It was so loud that the narrator begins to think that soon the neighbors will hear it, in which the narrator decides to muffle the sound, kill the old man and place him beneath the floor boards where the beating of the heart was no longer heard and “where the eye could no longer see, not even the old man’s eye”. However the heart continues to beat while three police men are present, driving the narrator into insanity and eventually a confession. I feel Edgar Allen Poe made these symbols so prominent because it’s a connection his audience can make with his piece, the emotional factor the heart holds with its perceived inability to stop beating and the power the eye holds against the narrator, which encourages him to take the life of the old man. The symbols also help us understand a little bit about the narrator and the intentions he had.