Theme
Versions of Reality
→ Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" disrupts our versions of reality, even as we identify with it in ways we might not want to admit. Something sparks our curiosity and forces us to follow the narrator through the chilling maze of his mind. We hear the story of murder through words, and through his version of reality.
Cunning and Cleverness
→ The main character of "The Tell-Tale Heart" promises us a tale of cunning and cleverness, and delivers. At the onset, we doubt the cleverness; maybe we even feel cleverer than the story. But as Edgar Allan Poe's ten-paragraph masterpiece unfolds, we find we are caught in the story's web, just as the characters are. We must regain our cunning and cleverness to get out.
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Here home (in both senses) is a place of violence, death, disease, anguish, and isolation. It's also a place where mysterious hearts tell tales in the night, grim tales, of home gone bad.
Mortality
→ "The Tell-Heart" is a murder mystery, the kind where we know who the killer is (sort of), but can't really understand his motives. This story deals with the fear of death, with dying, and the question of how a person can kill another. As such, Edgar Allan Poe's story is suffused with an underlying sadness, and a sense of mourning.
Time
→ The Tell-Tale Heart" is jammed with references to time and clocks. One could even say it's obsessed with time. The time structure seems fairly straightforward at first, but, through all the aforementioned references, it succeeds in confusing and eluding us. Some questions of time in the story are never answered, contributing to the confusion.
Moral Lesson
Guilt will always get you in the end. Sin is never hidden from the self and we will sit in judgment of ourselves in the