The Tell-Tale Heart Themes

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...

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 Edg...

"Home is where the heart is." Edgar Allan Poe makes a mockery of this shopworn phrase in "The Tell-Tale Heart," expressing some deep anxieties toward the very idea of "home" (as in the place one ha...

"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 quest...

"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 aforem...