Any analysis of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” must consider two things: the narrator and the old man’s eye. Poe’s narrator is a first-person central narrator, meaning he is also the story’s main character. Everything we see, hear, feel, and know as readers, we experience as the narrator does. This is particularly effective with this story because it allows us to understand why the narrator acts as he does. On the other hand, the narrator’s constant assurances that he is not insane undermine our understanding of his behaviors as it becomes increasingly obvious that he is indeed insane. This constant tension for the reader between understanding and revulsion is, I believe, part of Poe’s intent because, again, it parallels the narrator’s own experience. One does not simply read “The Tell-Tale Heart;” one experiences it.
The narrator’s focal point is the old man’s eye. He tells us that he loves the old man, that the old man treated him well, and that there is no greed or desire for possessions that drive his decision to kill him. Instead, “it was his eye! yes, [sic] it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it” (Poe). The narrator also calls it the “Evil Eye” and ascribes supernatural powers to it, telling readers that its glance “chilled the very marrow in [his] bones” and attributing something more than human to it when he details the careful concealment of the body so “that no human eye—not even his—could have detected any thing [sic] wrong” (Poe). He also erases the old man’s personhood by identifying him only as his eye: “I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person” (Poe). So, we can read this story as one in which an old man has an eye so weird and so powerful that it drives his male companion—whether he is a son, nephew, caretaker, or some other relation is not made clear—to kill him. Or…we can read this story as one in which the eye, generally accepted to be representative of one’s character, the proverbial “window to the soul,” symbolizes the narrator’s blindness to his own self.
Let’s take a closer look at our narrator’s insistence that he is not mad (insane). In the very first sentence, he tells us he has been “nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous” (Poe) but this is no reason for us to believe he is mentally unbalanced. True, but there is more. After he reveals to us his plan to kill the old man, the narrator again addresses our concerns that he might be mad and tries to mitigate those concerns by showing us how carefully he has planned the murder: “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded” (Poe). He attempts again to alleviate our growing certainty that he is unhinged after he has killed the old man and dismembered him: “If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body” (Poe). So the narrator clearly has no understanding of his own madness, and this can be symbolized, too, in the descriptions he gives us of the eye. First it is “a pale blue eye, with a film over it,” and then it is “a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it” (Poe). Both descriptions give us a sense that this eye does not see things clearly. It is also interesting that at the outset of the story, the eye is simply pale with a film over it, but as the narrator descends further into madness the film becomes a “hideous veil.” Film is generally transparent. It disallows perfect vision but it can be seen through; however, a veil is substantially more obstructive. If we continue to understand our narrator as being represented by the eye, this makes sense. As he moves further from sanity, the clarity of self-awareness erodes.
The narrator’s other descriptions of the eye as “evil” and like that of a vulture also are much more apropos to himself than the old man. In fact, the only information we have about the old man is that he was kind to his companion, he had some wealth, and he slept a lot. The narrator, on the other hand, harbors evil within himself, which is more than apparent based on his actions. He also embodies characteristics of a vulture, stalking and dismembering his prey. It is through the old man’s eye that we actually ‘see’ the narrator for who he really is.
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