The Tell-Tale Heart(Edgar Allan Poe) as gothic fiction (2)

 

The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe) as gothic fiction

 

131031 Yesuel (Lillian) Kim

 

Gothic fiction originally refers to a story with a dark and horrific atmosphere based on medieval background. However, its meaning expanded, and now it involves several genres such as thriller, Romanticism, mystery, science fiction, and horror. Gothic fictions also deal with human’s unreasonable, evil desire, and abnormal emotion. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, [The Tell Tale Heart] has the characteristics of gothic fiction.

Lack of description, or information shows this novel is gothic fiction. There are no detail background description except door, bed, and chair. The writer is mentioning the minimum furniture that is crucial to maintain the plot. Also, we don’t have sufficient information of who the madman and old man are, and what kind of relationship they’re in. Even if, the protagonist him(her)self is telling the story, he(she) only shows his emotion, not the information of himself. The readers have to imagine the background, character, and actively participate in making the story. Thus, people will get more afraid of this amorphous penetrator than when all the information is given. Also, a lack of information generates the mysterious and horrific atmosphere.

We can find the emotion of the protagonist contributes to making this novel into gothic fiction. At the beginning of the novel, we can find a lot of exclamation marks and interjections such as ‘Ha!’, and ‘Oh’, which mean that he/she is excited. He actually smiled ‘gaily’ in the process. The idea of killing the old man is abnormal, but considering that he is excited, this tells that the man is mad and psychopathic. Next, he doesn’t show much emotion when telling how he dealt with corpse. He is narrating what he did in stable, nonchalant tone. Being indifferent at what he did makes the reader feel more horror. Lastly, the reader can definitely feel the upsurge of emotion at the end of the story when he hears the heartbeat of the dead man. He acted with audacity, then, becomes impatient. At last, he bursts out, “Dissemble no more! I admit the deed!-tear up the planks!” The sense of guilt verbalized as the heartbeat throbs in his mind, and the readers can feel that he is afraid of the sense of guilt in his own mind since the emotion which used to be hidden suddenly showed upsurge and exploded at the end of the novel, giving the strong impact to the readers. The emotion was effectively expressed, and got conveyed to the reader, which can mean that this short story has the characteristic of Romanticism.

The expression in the [The Tale Tell Heart] makes this novel more of a thriller. Poe describes the sound of heartbeat heard by the protagonist as a sound of ‘watch enveloped in cotton.’ More than description itself, each word is a symbol. A Watch shows time. Thus, the watch enveloped in cotton means killing time, which leads to an idea of killing the old man who has been living for a long time. Furthermore, the cotton reminds the readers of a bed. Therefore, the watch enveloped, covered in cotton actually means the old man dying under the bed. On top of that, ‘crevice’, used when describing the crack where the dim light comes out of the lantern through is another expression putting an emphasis on desire. The word, ‘Crevice’ is a trigger for the madman to show the evil desire to kill him. The lantern watched the same scene as the mad protagonist did. In the darkness, the mad man could have vision of the sleeping old man by opening the lantern, and making the crevice. Right before the dim light comes out, there’s a silence and no movement in the scene. It is an oppressed situation. However, as soon as the dim string of light appears, the mad man faces the blue vulture-like eye of the old man, starting off the extreme tension which leads to a terrible crime at the end. When the dim light comes out of the lantern through crevice, the abnormal desire to kill the old man shows itself in earnest.  This plot’s development maximizes the impact of evil desire. These kinds of expression make the readers feel more thrilled while reading the novel.

[The Tell Tale Heart] has certain characteristics of gothic novel in its plot, emotion, and expression. I actually felt shiver and horror reading this novel. There may be more factors of gothic novel in this story, but still [The Tell Tale Heart] is superb piece of gothic fiction dragging the readers into the abyss of horror, thriller, and mysterious story.