The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe- Summary and Analysis

 The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe- Summary and Analysis

Edgar Allen Poe is one of the greatest names in American literature. Renowned as a poet, short writer, playwright and novelist, his name has become synonymous with writings on the macabre and the grotesque. Poe was born on 19 January 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts to actors Elizabeth and David Poe. He gained considerable reputation as a critic and an editor. His first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in 1839. It contained one of his most famous stories, ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. Poe’s well-known poem, ‘The Raven’ was published in 1845 and it brought him fame in America and abroad.

Elements of his largely tragic life have made their way into his writing which is typically melancholic and morbid. His works boldly explore aspects of human life that are often hidden. He used his compressed, tightly woven prose style to the utmost effect in stories like “The Cask of Amontillado’ (1846), “The Purloined Letter” (1845) and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841).

Poe died on 13 October 1849. Poe’s contribution to literature has been acknowledged by critics and he remains popular to this day. He is widely regarded as the father of the American horror story. He is also credited with inventing the modern detective story with a number of stories featuring his fictional detective Dupin.

‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ was published in January 1843 in a magazine called Pioneer. The story, narrated in the first person, recounts an act of murder. The unnamed narrator tells us how he carefully planned and carried out the murder of the old man he lived with.

The unknown narrator in the first person tells us in the beginning that madness had sharpened his senses and his hearing is acute. He could even hear voices from heaven and hell. But he was dreadfully nervous and haunted by an image of an eye of an old man. It was the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye. The narrator states that he did not have anything against the old man and he loved him. He was also not interested in the money of the old man. But he couldn’t stand the sight of his eye. He considered it to be evil in nature. 

The narrator tells us how meticulously he planned the murder of the old man. In the process he explains that this planning and strategy could not be done by someone who is mad. He informs that every night at 12 o’ clock, he would peep into the room of the old man with an intention to murder him. For seven days he did this routine. He couldn’t do anything because the old man’s eye was closed. He would return annoyingly as it is his “Evil Eye” which motivates him to murder him. Ironically, in the morning he would ask the old man about his health.

The narrator continues his story and on the eighth day of his routine which was the day he murdered the old man he entered his room with much caution. He thought about his wise strategy and laughs at the old man’s lack of awareness. However, the old man sensed something and moved in his bed. The narrator tells us that he did not feel afraid as he knew that the old man cannot see him in the darkness. As he quietly entered the room, the old man heard some noise and asked who was there in the room. The narrator informs us that he did not move an inch for an hour knowing that the old man is awake. Then he hears a frightening cry from the old man sitting alert in his bed. He tells us that the old man knows not of his presence but he can assume his death impending upon him. Afterwards, he gradually shows the lantern light on the old man and realizes that his hateful eye is open. It makes him angry. He does not notice his face but the blue hateful eye that troubles him. The sight of his eye fills him with rage. 

Moreover, as he brags of his expanded hearing sense, he hears the beating of the heart of the old man. He attempts to remain quiet however the beating of the old man’s heart builds his displeasure. The storyteller becomes restless and can't bear the sound any longer. The storyteller takes the help of the bed and holds it immovably "over his head". The elderly person, gradually and steadily, suffocates and his pulse stops. The storyteller takes a murmur of relief realizing that his eye will never trouble him again. He again challenges the individuals who question his mental soundness and tells them to know that they ought to consider how he concealed the dead body so as nobody can track down it. He dissects each part of the dead body cautiously. Then, at that point, he removes the planks from the floor and conceals the pieces there ensuring nothing remains behind. A while later, he puts the boards down once more, with incredible consideration, with the goal that nobody can obtain some proof of his murder. He washed off the stains from the floor.

At the point when he gets done, it was 4 o’ clock in the morning. Somebody thumps at the door. He tranquilly opens the door and understands that three police officers have shown up. They have been called upon by one of the neighbors who heard the yell of the elderly person. They are here to explore the incident. He lets them inside and informs that he was the one who yelled as a result of a bad dream. He accompanies them all around the house and advises them to do their search. He even leads them to the elderly person's room and offers them seats to stay there and rest. He admits that his quiet conduct caused the cops to accept his clarification and they sat there without any suspicion. They talk persistently and sooner or later; the storyteller wishes they should leave. Gradually and slowly, he becomes restless and his serenity disappears. Meanwhile, he hears some sound. From the outset, he believes it to be inside his head however at that point he understands that the sound isn't inward rather it is in the room. He talks louder and tries to cover it up yet it gets stronger with the progression of time. It seems like the sound of a heart beating from under the planks. 

He strolls forward and backward in the room to make some commotion however the sound increases. Notwithstanding, the police officers appear not to hear it and they are occupied with talking and grinning obviously. The storyteller thinks the police officers know and they are snickering at his ineptitude. He says he continually endured their grins and the sound of the heartbeat. In the end, he can't stand it any longer and admits his wrongdoing. He advises the police officers to take away the planks and to track down the ruined body of the elderly person and his beating heart.

In this story, Poe shows us the significance of emotional wellness. The story shows that psychological sickness can drive an individual to the cruelest of actions. Mental issues can lead people to act perilously with practically no intention. The storyteller, in the story, experiences some psychological issues which lead to his annihilation. He continually denies the way that he experiences dysfunctional behavior yet his abnormal activities demonstrate that he experiences some mental issue. He is fixated on killing the elderly person for reasons unknown and notices him for seven progressive evenings. The storyteller, being paranoiac, kills the elderly person out of dread yet that is certifiably not an adequate explanation.

Besides, he additionally rejoices in the second when he chokes out the elderly person, holding the bed firmly over his face. This occasion makes him a sadist; who appreciates causing torment for other people. This occasion likewise shows that he has some mental issues. Through these occasions, Poe exhibits that a person's mental wellbeing is just about as significant as his actual wellbeing. The thumping of the heart happens inside the storyteller himself. It is informed in the start of the story that he is over-delicate. He can hear and feel things that others can't. Toward the end of the story, there is no thumping heart under the boards. Unmistakably, the storyteller, who has quite recently completed the terrible demonstration of eviscerating a dead body, can't adapt to the profoundly inner strength required when the police are looking through the house. These two variables cause his pulse to speed up to the point that his pulse is beating in his ears so noisily that he can't stand the mental tension any more. Consequently, he admits to his terrible deed. The storyteller's heart makes him a convict himself.

Michael Branch- Ecocriticism: The Nature of Nature in Literary Theory and Practice- Analysis and Notes

 Michael Branch: Ecocriticism: The Nature of Nature in Literary Theory and Practice

In his study of primitivism in antiquity, Arthur Lovejoy observes that "one of the strangest, most mighty and most power elements in Western thought is the use of the term 'nature' to express the standard of human values, the identification of the appropriate with that which is 'natural' or 'according to nature’. There has traditionally been as little consensus about what constitutes the "natural" as there has been about what constitutes the "good." Considering the sixty-six meanings of nature which Lovejoy gives as proof for the polysemous nature of "nature", it is handy to admire the medieval notion of libri naturae, or the e book of nature. Indeed, no different textual content has been so broadly read, so little understood, so frequently invoked, and so successful of sustaining the range of interpretations projected upon it by way of human want and imagination. Each of the sixty-six meanings Lovejoy cites is each a department in the genealogy of an idea and a second in the records of our development of surroundings and our relationship to it. This essay is involved generally with the sixty-seventh meaning of nature with how cutting-edge ecophilosophy represents so vital an improvement in the evolution of our thoughts about nature, and with how ecological recognition is coming to be mirrored in current literary concept and practice.

Ecosophy is itself a constellation of complex and sometimes contradictory ideas not a sixty-seventh meaning so much as an exciting discursive climate in which a new conception of our relationship to nature is clearly emergent. Although ecological science has flourished in the late twentieth century, it is the metaphysical implications of ecology which are primarily responsible for the recent, unprecedented interest in ecological thinking. Only in the last twenty years has an awareness of such thinking entered the popular consciousness in America. Only in the last ten years have we begun in earnest to develop and debate philosophical and ethical implications of ecology, and only in the last few years has literary scholarship under the aegis of "ecocriticism “begun to explore constructions of environment in literary texts and theoretical discourse.

Ecosophical thinking has already begun to exert an influence upon the way literary texts are created, interpreted, and taught. Ecosophical critiques of the humanities' relative unresponsiveness to environmental issues are being amplified, and there is a greater acknowledgment of the need for environmental education throughout the humanities. As sensitivity to environmental problems continues to grow, literary theory and criticism entrenched as they are in related social and political contexts have increasingly come to reflect this sensitivity. As a measure of our culture's aesthetic sensibility and as a response to the changing circumstances of our lives, contemporary literature has also begun to demonstrate increasing environmental concern.

There are, however, better and older reasons for the influence of environmental awareness upon literary studies. Although ecosophical thinking sometimes appears unprecedented, there is a strong tradition of such thinking within the domain of literary art. First, questions about the proper role of humans in the cosmic scheme have always engaged the literary imagination, and concerns about maintaining or restoring a right relationship to nature are both thematically and symbolically present in the literature of every culture. For example, when Oedipus Rex opens with a plague upon the land, or The Bible begins with Adam and Eve's expulsion from the paradisiacal garden, or The Divine Comedy starts with Dante lost in the rank wildness of the dark wood, we understand that the ethical propriety of individual action is metaphorically conceived of in terms of the health and balance of nature. Second, literature has always struggled with questions of value comparable to those being asked by ecosophy. For example: should humans be valued as creations of God, as Milton might suggest, as creations of nature, as Rousseau might suggest, or as creations of culture, as Henry James might suggest? Should wilderness be feared, as it was by Puritan exegetes, studied scientifically, as it was by Enlightenment rationalists, or revered, as it was by Romantic poets? Third, literature has always been extremely concerned with the creation and recreation of a sense of place. For example, Frost's New England and Faulkner's Mississippi are the subjects rather than simply the settings of their work. Fourth, a great deal of literature has dealt explicitly with nature, whether to speculate upon our place within it, or to explore and express its beauty irrespective of human concerns. Both ecosophy and literature are born of a meeting between nature and culture: both deeply explore and often deeply question the relationships between humans and their natural surroundings.

Historically, literature has exerted a tremendous influence upon our changing conceptions of natural systems and our role within them. Homer provided his age with a vision of nature as a stage upon which gods and heroes enacted a cosmic drama. The classical ideas of nature's plenitude and the human place in nature's hierarchical system were formulated by Plato and Aristotle, respectively. The work of Hellenistic authors including Virgil and Horace first introduced the notion that nature exists as a serene retreat from the artificial environs of the city. During the middle ages, authors from Augustine to Aquinas promulgated the orthodox Christian view that nature was primarily significant as tangible evidence of God's design. Renaissance and early seventeenth-century writers such as Bacon and Descartes accelerated the emergence of the modern world view by applauding human control over natural forces. In the eighteenth century, Robert Bruns’s poetry and Gilbert White's natural history helped establish more congenial attitudes toward nature during the Age of Reason. In the nineteenth century, continental, English, and American romantic literature from Goethe to Wordsworth to Emerson led the criticism of industrial culture's hegemonic view of nature as mere commodity. And in the twentieth century, the most eloquent voices for an ecologically integrative vision of nature have come from literary artists as diverse as D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, John Muir, and Edward Abbey.

Literature has always conditioned our philosophical understanding of nature. Hence literary theory and practice also have a role in shaping our cultural constructions of environment. The phrases like the beautiful, the picturesque, the sublime, the scenic, the wild, etc. show the aesthetic categories by which our feelings for nature are understood. For the early Greeks, the work of art was itself the central metaphor for nature. Applying the ecosophical literary theory, a literary text might actually be likened to an ecosystem: it is a functional whole whose purposes are accomplished through integration of constituent elements. We continuously search it for knowledge of who we are and how to live in the world. Literature has so often provided the nexus between the interlocking contexts of nature and culture. Ecosophy’s new ideas about our relationship to the environment have begun to influence our critical approaches to literary texts.

Ecosophy and Poststructuralist Literary Theory.

Both theorists find similarity in the use of the word- ‘intertextuality’. Ecosophers locate value in natural wholes, and in the interrelationships, which comprise them. Similarly, poststructuralists such as Stanley Fish locate meaning within the context of a particular discourse community, and deny that it may exist independently of such a context. When Saussure maintains that the meaning of words exists only as a function of their differences from other words, he reinforces ecologist Paul Shepard’s contention that the relationships among things are as real as the things. When Derrida asserts that signification is achieved relationally through a play of signifiers, he anticipates ecosophist Neil Evernden’s claim that the self is created by a system of natural signifiers that “there is no such thing as an individual, only an individual-in-context. Whether in a linguistic or an ecosystemic context, no individual element may be understood in isolation from the generative and defining context of the systemic whole.

In post structuralist theory, emphasis upon contexted discourse insists that all readings are situated in a variety of interpenetrating contexts, that our interpretations of literary texts are relationally constructed rather than hermeneutically revealed. According to poststructuralists, the locus of literary meaning resides neither in the reader nor in the text, but resides indeterminately in the contextual interpenetration of the two.

Ecosophy challenges the assumption of objectivity by which human readers have interpreted the text of nature. It points to tree as an example. In addition to providing the paper which is the physical medium of this article, a tree is also a bird’s way of securing shelter, the soil’s way of preventing its being washed to the sea. If we interpret the tree to mean only dollars or furniture or firewood, we have misread the tree by ignoring the variety of other contexts which define its meaning and value. Thus, ecophilosophy mirrors literary theory in calling for an acknowledgment that meaning and value are determined through negotiated patterns of interrelationship rather than claims of objectivity.

Both post structuralist theory and ecosophy object to a certain kind of authority. Post structuralist theory argues that this unjust authority stems from a kind of “presence”, while ecosophy holds that it has its source in anthropocentrism. Post structuralist theory wishes to replace privileged discourse of all kinds with a concept of contextual discourse which better represents a plurality of voices. A comparable impulse is clearly visible in ecosophy’s wish to replace anthropocentricism with an affirmation of the value of ecosystemic wholes. It views the decentering of the human subject as an affirmation and as a liberation of life which results in a sense of interrelationship rather than a pattern of domination.

Ecologizing Literary Studies

Eco critic Cheryll Glotfelty offers that ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between human culture and the material world, between the human and the nonhuman. Ecological literary criticism focuses specifically upon the cultural elements, language and literature and their relationship to the environment. 

Many Eco critics have catalyzed the “ecologizing” of literary studies by exploring the merits of the American nature writing tradition. The term “nature writing” now refers to the rich corpus of literature which takes nature, or the relationship between human and non-human nature, as its primary focus. As a discipline in the humanities, literary studies have traditionally been informed by a variety of anthropocentric assumptions about the centrality of humans in the enactment and authorization of literary texts. Under the influence of ecosophical thinking which is now entering the academy through numerous disciplines, literary scholars are presently using nature writing to question the very assumptions which have resulted in its critical neglect.

Peter Fritzell’s ‘Nature Writing and America, Essays on a Cultural Type’ (1990) argues that writing must be seen as an organic activity, as an artifact of the psychobiotic needs of the human organism.

Scott Slovic’s ‘Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing’ (1992) employs environmental psychology to examine environmental consciousness and the ways in which nature writers attempt to inspire this consciousness among their readers.

Critics Karen Warren, Patrick Murphy and Jim Cheney have suggested provocative ways in which ecofeminist critical perspectives can enhance the ecosophical sensitivity of literary studies generally.

Scott Slovic and Terrell Dixon have recently edited a reader for the undergraduate composition courses, entitled ‘Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers, and many teachers are documenting successful experiments using environmental writing in composition as well as literature courses.

The recent formation of ‘The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) further suggests that the ecosophical thinking which is already on the threshold of literary studies has begun to influence the way literature sees the environment and the way we as critics see the environment in and of literature.

Ecocriticism shifts critical focus from social relations toward natural relationships, and views the individual as a member of ecosystemic as well as human patterns of organization. Ecocriticism values highly the literary “sense of place”, not as a setting but as an essential expression of bonding with or alienation from a specific natural context. It looks to literature to provide speculation upon the relationship between human and nonhuman nature, and to suggest ways in which that relationship might be reinterpreted or reformed. It wishes to demonstrate how elements of literary texts work together, rather than how they may be taken apart. Ecocritics take seriously both the spiritual consequences of nature and the moral consequences of its violation.

Ecocriticism exists in constellation with and often in tremulous suspension between the post-modern intellectual movements of post structuralist literary theory and contemporary ecophilosophy. In order for ecocriticism to provide a meaningful framework for students of literature and the environment, ecocritics must wrestle with a simple paradox, which might be stated this simple way: “nature” is both a cultural construct and a grounding reality.

When Aristotle, Virgil, Augustine and Darwin wrote of “nature’, they meant very different things by the term; and as current political battles over land use constantly remind us, there is no consensus about the definition of nature even within our own historical moment. As a 67^th interpretation of nature in text and theoretical discourse, ecosophical criticism must attempt to chart a course away from our culture’s destructive and self- destructive relationship with the natural world.