The Tell-Tale Heart
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The Tell-Tale Heart" is an 1843 short story by Edgar Allan Poe. It follows an unnamed narrator who insists on his sanity despite his murder of an old man with a vulture eye. The murder is carefully calculated and the murderer hides the body by cutting it into pieces and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately, the narrator's guilt manifests itself in the hallucination that the man's heart is still beating under the floorboards.
It is unclear what relationship, if any, the old man and his murderer share. It has been suggested that the old man is a father figure or, perhaps, that his vulture eye represents some sort of veiled secret. The ambiguity and lack of details about the two main characters stands in stark contrast to the specific plot details leading up to the murder.
The story was first published in James Russell Lowell's The Pioneer in January 1843. Widely considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and one of Poe's most famous short stories, "The Tell-Tale Heart" has been adapted or served as an inspiration for a variety of media.
Adaptations
- The earliest acknowledged adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart" was in 1928 in a film of the same name directed by Charles Klein and starring Otto Matiesen and Darvas. It stayed faithful to the original tale though future television and film adaptations often expanded the short story to full-length feature films. One version, a 1953 animated film by UPA read by James Mason, is included among the films preserved in the United States National Film Registry. Other versions are greatly expanded from the original work, including a 1960 version, The Tell-Tale Heart, which adds a love triangle to the story.
- The film Nightmares from the Mind of Poe (2006) adapts "The Tell-Tale Heart" along with "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Premature Burial" and "The Raven".
- The Radio Tales series produced the drama The Tell-Tale Heart for National Public Radio. The story was performed by Winifred Phillips along with music composed by her.
