EDGAR ALLAN POE

Edgar Allan Poe´s biography

On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia in Baltimore, Maryland.

The tell-tale heart summary

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator, who insists he is sane but is suffering from a disease (nervousness) which causes "over-acuteness of the senses". Due to the ambiguity surrounding the identity of the story's narrator, the narrator's gender cannot be known for certain. However, for ease of description, masculine pronouns are used in this article.

The old man with whom he lives has a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye, which distresses the narrator so much that he plots to murder the old man, despite also insisting that he loves the old man. The narrator insists that his careful precision in committing the murder proves that he cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room in order to shine a sliver of light onto the "evil eye". However, the old man's vulture-eye is always closed, making it impossible to "do the work".

On the eighth night, the old man awakens after the narrator's hand slips and makes a noise, interrupting the narrator's nightly ritual. But the narrator does not draw back and, after some time, decides to open his lantern. A single thin ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the "evil eye", revealing that it is wide open. Hearing the old man's heart beating loudly and dangerously fast from terror, the narrator decides to strike, jumping out with a loud yell and smothering the old man with his own bed. The narrator then dismembers the body and conceals the pieces under the floorboards and ensures the concealment of all signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbor to report to the police, who the narrator invites in to look around. He claims that the screams heard were his own in a nightmare and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in the old man's room, on the very spot where the body is concealed, and suspect nothing, as the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner about him.

The narrator begins to feel uncomfortable and notices a ringing in his ears. As the ringing grows louder, the narrator comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. The sound increases steadily, though the officers seem to pay no attention to it. Terrified by the violent beating of the heart and convinced that the officers are aware not only of the heartbeat, but also of his guilt, the narrator breaks down and confesses, telling them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the remains of the old man's body.