“How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit? The fear of death.” This quote from the film, The Dark Knight Rises, though derived from a fictional setting, illustrates a point that is all too real. The fear of the sheer nothingness, the uncertainty that is death has been one of the most prevalent and yet most buried terrors human beings have faced since their dawn. For millennia people have developed and passed on stories of a life after death to mask this fear, but it has endured nonetheless and is just as great a stressor today as it was thousands of years ago. Many writers and thinkers throughout the ages have attempted a different approach than classical religions’ “distraction tactic” to cope with this ultimate anxiety; this tactic involves embracing this fear through storytelling rather than burying it. Fictional tales and urban legends involving encounters and “agents” of death have been around for as long as language itself. The most obvious motive for these myths and narratives is a means of entertainment, but I believe they also came to fruition as a response to the need to embrace the natural and powerful fear of death through a medium which people inherently understand. This identification with the ever-present anxiety of dying is a key to “being human,” as it enriches life and fills our experiences with color and meaning. One of the greatest ever to delve into the realm of “making death come to life” through writing stories is also one of the most recent to do so; the man I am speaking of is none other than America’s own Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a gifted poet, well known for his long rhyming tales replete with sorrow and chills in works such as “Annabelle Lee” and “The Raven,” both of which revolve heavily around the theme of death. Poe is also established as one of the great prose writers of all time and is even credited by many as the inventor of the short scary story. Perhaps the greatest example of Poe’s eerie yarns, and a tale that clashes adeptly with the topic of death, is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” This story follows a deeply disturbed young man who commits to the idea of murdering an old man, an acquaintance of his, for the sole purpose of never having to see his “vulture eye” again, which so vexed him. The tale offers a simple and yet wildly intricate recount of the young man’s plot to commit this dark deed, the thrilling execution of this plan, and the stunning and unearthly sequence of events that comprises the aftermath. If you have never read this brief and spine-chilling story, I strongly encourage you to do so by clicking the link below. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a masterfully chilling and utterly captivating tale that remains one of the strangest and most praiseworthy short stories ever written. The methods Poe uses to craft this tale into the masterpiece that it is are a remarkable blend of oppositional literary devices and an overwhelmingly intriguing ambiguity of the context from which the story is delivered.
The most prevalent tactic Poe puts into action in this classic is his blending of adversarial concepts. Throughout the tale, Poe brilliantly clashes seemingly incompatible ideas to elicit a number of emotional responses from the reader and maintain an aura of uncertainty and a desire to discover what happens next. Some of these conjunctions are relatively obvious and can be pulled directly from the text, such as imagery of light and divinity juxtaposed by imagery of chilling bleakness and hellish delusions: “I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth,” (paragraph 1) “…it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.” (paragraph 5) However, many of these oppositions are not as apparent and require some analysis. For example, Poe utilizes a skillful blend of inevitabilty and uncertainty throughout the entire story. From nearly the very beginning, the speaker reveals that he had a plan to kill the old man, and the story is constructed as a recount of the entirety of events that unfolded as a result of this plan; as a result, it is reasonably assumed that the tale the speaker is about to relay will surely involve the slaying of this poor old man. However, despite this assured inevitability, the narrative is very heavily defined by a recurring sense of uncertainty. From the steadfast suspenseful build-up on the night the old man is murdered to the troubling perplexity of what will happen as two police officers make there way into the house where the murder took place, the reader is made to remain on the edge of their seat for the entirety of the yarn. A number of other “blendings” can be observed throughout the narrative, such as the characterization of the speaker as both a malignant, delusional madman and an amiable craftsman, and the convergence of the speaker’s feelings of pity and disdain for his helpless victim. These contradictory elements make for an advanced relation and understanding of events, the likes of which the reader has never experienced before; this tactic produces a sense of captivation that cannot be replicated.
Another method by which Poe shapes this tale of fright is through his implementation of a context composed of ambiguity and speculation. The story begins with a brief prologue in which it is made known that the events that are to be told have already happened, and this narration is simply a relation of things that have been rather than a progression through the sequences as they occur. In addition, the introduction reveals that the speaker had plans to commit a murder. Several times in the first few paragraphs, our conniving narrator openly tries to argue that he is not a madman, despite what the reader may think. Besides these few clues, no other information is given as to what lies outside the text. The speaker’s whereabouts as he relates the story, what became of him after he confessed his hideous crime to the police, and his motives in recalling this window into the past, all of these are left up to the speculation of the reader. Perhaps the speaker was arrested and confined to a prison for the rest of his days as he relates his experience to a visitor. Perhaps he was shanghaied to a mental institution upstate, and his motive for telling his tale is simply a tactic to convince the guards that he does not belong there. Or maybe, in a fit of delusional rage, the narrator made a violent escape after his confession, leaving the two officers for dead and fleeing to the wilderness to live a life of concealment; the story he is telling is simply his schizophrenic mind recounting the events in an effort to keep his senses at bay. Whatever the answer is, each new possibility considered, each crazed explanation the reader allows their mind to journey into sends chills down their spine. This ambiguity opens up a whole new realm of senses and further deepens the reader’s immersion in the narrative. In a sense, this open-endedness allows the story to never end, and that is something truly spectacular.
Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “The Tell-tale Heart” is truly one of the best ever written, and it offers a sense of fear and engrossment that is second to none. To craft this tale into the original and soul-shaking work of art that it is, Poe uses a realm of juxtaposition in which unlike elements are articulately blended to yield a sense of bewilderment and engrossment that is one of a kind. Poe also solidifies this story’s dazzling and unique status by employing an air of mysteriousness and uncertainty concerning the world in which the story takes place and the condition of its speaker, and this unique tactic makes for a self-perpetuating range of possibilities that will drain the color from the reader’s face while keeping their mind locked in a trance of captivation. The far-reaching, sometimes inexplicable implications of this tale and Poe’s many other works not only piece together to tell mind-bending stories, but they also stem from a basic human need to face death while being enthralled with life.