An appreciation of 'The Tell Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe and 'The Confession' by Charles Dickens.

An Appreciation of

‘The Tell Tale Heart’ By Edgar Allan Poe

and ‘The Confession’ By Charles Dickens

This assignment asks for an appreciation of the stories by Edgar Allen Poe ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ and Charles Dickens ‘The Confession’. I will start by exploring Edgar Allen Poe’s story and style of writing, how it captivates the reader, building suspense and terror. I will then explore Charles Dickens ‘Confession’

And finally following my analysis of the two stories I will compare and contrast the different styles.

Edgar Allen Poe’s story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ describes how the perpetrator plans and executes a vicious attack on an old man. This story is told in an autobiographical format with the author describing his state of mind, questioning his own sanity. He calmly describes how there was no object or passion that caused him to commit the heinous act of murder as he describes his love for the old man. His only explanation is his victims ‘eye’ which he describes as vulture like and intimidating. He disassociates the ‘eye ‘ from the old man and it is the eye that drives him to commit the crime.

He talks of his dissimulation in planning the old man’s death and how e treated him during the week prior to killing him, how he taunted him, stalked him, and preyed upon him at midnight (witching hour), this sinister act of voyeurism is unpleasant and adds to the tension of the story. It was only until the seventh night when he realised that to rid himself of the ‘Evil Eye’ he need to have the old man’s eye open to commit the act.

On the eighth night he describes how he carefully taunts the old man describing his actions as clever and skilled, hysteria sets in and finds the events exhilarating, which is further compounded by his knowledge that the old man was fearful of intruders and robbers to realise the real danger is from within. He describes the fear and panic the old man is experiencing when he hears someone in his room, he goes on to empathise and understand how the old man is rationalising for the noise he heard. The author gives a description of a Grim Reaper, stalking in the shadows and enveloping the victim. He builds suspense and describes the web that he’s weaving to rid himself of the ‘vulture eye’. He describes seeing the ‘eye’ as freezing him and bringing his focus purely on the ‘eye’ completely detaching the old man from the ‘eye’. He recalls hearing the old man’s heart beating like a drum ‘It was a low, dull, quick sound- much such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton’. His acuteness of hearing increases the loudness of the heart beat it’s then he describes nervousness mixed with excitement.

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It’s with this increasing loudness that he fears he will by heard by neighbours that he enters the room dragging the old man to the floor pulling the mattress on top of him, where as the heart beat becomes muffled and finally stops. He describes the man as being stone dead and not troubling him any longer. In the concluding paragraphs he talks of how he concealed the body, dismembering the body cutting off the old man’s head and limbs and depositing them under the floor boards, believing himself to be clever. However the actions at such early hours raised suspicions. This brought three policemen knocking at the door, alerted by a neighbour hearing a shriek, in the middle of the night. The murderer invited the policemen in to search the house and take a rest from their duties. He showed his boldness, by placing the chairs above where he concealed the body. It was then he describes hearing a ringing much the same as the beating of the heart. He describes it as catching his breath, in fear that the officers also heard the beating. His anxiety increased and his paranoia set in. With the policemen not making a move to go he feared that they had heard the beating, it was so loud to him he thought they were bound to hear it and that he confessed to committing the deed and exposed the body to the police. There the story ends and we can only guess at the murderer’s sentence.

‘The Confession’

This is an autobiographical story which takes places in a retrospective view of the author’s life. This is a story that tells a confession of a condemned man.

He talks of his childhood where he is victim to his own low self esteem with a few friends and his relationship with his brother. He is extremely jealous of his sibling because he perceives him as better than him ‘He was open-hearted and generous, handsomer than I, more accomplished, and generally beloved’ his friends and acquaintances would say ‘…they were surprised to find two brothers so unlike in their manners and appearance’. Then it tells of how his brother has been struck with a terminal illness.

He talks of his marriage to his brother’s sister-in-law and describes this additional tie as estranging them further. He disliked his sister-in-law for he felt she could see through him, and see his jealousy, and so he could not meet her eyes but felt hers constantly digging into him. Only relieved by a quarrel, and her subsequent death, she both frightened and haunted him. She died shortly after her birth of her son. And on his brother’s death bed the child was placed in his care and should the child die all property and possessions pass onto to his wife. With ‘…a few brotherly words with me, deploring our long separation; and being exhausted, fell into a slumber, from which he never awoke.’ The author talks of his own childless relationship and how his wife took the place of the child’s mother. It was the child’s infatuation with his wife that he found disturbing as within him he saw his natural mother’s intuition, her face and her spirit which caused him to mistrust the boy to the point of obsession. He increasingly become uneasy in the child’s presence, he showed him fear and hate. The boy kept his distance whenever possible. He could not recall when these feelings came upon him and initially he wished the child no ill. The thoughts crept upon him until they overtook his whole thought patterns. He describes uneasiness when in the child’s focus, he become fixated on how easy it would be to kill the child. He began stalking the child, watching him, undertaking his tasks. As in the Tell Tale Heart this unhealthy voyeurism is vividly described to great effect- ‘I never could bear that child should see me’ in the Confession and ‘… a pale blue eye, with film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…’ in a Tell Tale Heart.

He goes on to describe how he grooms the child by modelling a model boat and waiting for him to go to the river to float it where he had planned to carry out the crime. He describes how he waited for three days until the child went to the river and when he was about to commit the crime the child saw his shadow in the water. It was as if the child’s mother’s eyes were starring back at him. In a moment lost in time the author appears to have mixed recollections of the event, one the child running for escape and the other when he is confronted with the child’s dead body lying at his feet stabbed by his sword.

With his wife away from home he planned to bury the child in the garden and he became obsessed by the murder he committed. He talks of his feigned distress at being told the child was missing and how he had to break the news to his wife. He carried out the actions of a grieving parent raising no suspicions whilst all day long watching the new turf being laid hoping to add speed to the process. He talks of disturbed sleep, waking from nightmares and constantly needing re-assurance ‘… and thus I spent the night in fits and starts, getting up and lying down full twenty times, and dreaming the same dream over and over again,’ he became paranoid and terrorised by his actions, fearful of discovery; he started to hear whispers on the wind- ‘… a breath of air sighed across it, to me it whispered murder.’ This increased his fear. Then he goes on to describe how on the fourth day visitors from his earlier regiment called upon him. He invited them into the garden and set the chairs out on top of the child’s grave. They ask after his wife and the child, unsettling him a ‘theme’ in his life and his paranoia sets in. He is obviously terrified they would discover his secret. In attempt to hide his fear he asks the men if the child has been murdered. They attempted to re-assure him there was nothing to gain from killing an innocent child. Then as they were attempting to raise his spirits, two bloodhounds bounded into the garden and began pacing and sniffing the ground, until they came upon the murderer’s chair they began to howl. The visitors said that the dogs had made a discovery. It was then the murderer became hysterical that his two visitors after a battle restrained him, during which time the dogs tore at the earth and on seeing this, the murderer dropped to his knees and confessed the truth and begged for forgiveness. Then he retracts his confession for which he’s tried and found guilty. His only Solace is the fact that his wife has lost all her faculties and does not know his and hers own misery and his guilt. I wonder, however, if our ‘hero’ was truly repentant or just searching for sympathy since he has been found out – disguising what was really inside as he had done all his life. Perhaps we’ll never know the real badness.

There are many similarities between both stories. ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ is autobiographical description/confession of the murder of a victim known by the perpetrator. It describes the careful process and preparation/planning of the murder and how the murderers own paranoia and psychosis results in the confession. They both describe the careful stalking of the victims.

‘The Confession’ by Charles Dickens is also an autobiographical description/confession of the murder in which the victim is known to the murderer and also he describes the preparation and once again has confessed as a result of paranoia. Both stories use the technique of repetition to create tension and suspense, and the use of short sharp sentences are also used to construct the state of panic of which both murderer’s encounter when they are discovered.

The contrasts between the two stories are that ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe talks of his love for the victim, but fear of the eye. There is no financial gain to the murder on the death of the victim. The author describes no regret or remorse for the act and prides himself on the cleverness of his actions, Edgar Allan Poe tells the story through a psychotic murderer, whereas in Charles Dickens ‘The Confession’, the author tells the story through more of a thinking and tactical murderer. The author dislikes the victim altogether with no love loss between them. There is a gain from the death of the victim. And during more rational times the murderer talks of much regret and remorse.

By Charlotte Bull 10c