'The Tell-Tale Heart' and Gothic Literature

           We’ve all learned that ‘Gothic literature/novel’ (or genre of Gothic) is a mixture of mostly horror, thriller, mystery, science fiction, and Romantic. I found out that ‘Romantic’ novels (with a capital R) do not mean love stories but is a type of novel from Romanticism, and includes impractical/idealistic ideas. I also came to know that most of the short stories written by Edgar Allen Poe are Gothic. Especially, stories titled <The Black Cat> and <The Tell-Tale Heart> were the typical ones.

<The Tell-Tale Heart> is a story of a murderer who kills an old man for his hate towards his eye. While the old man was sleeping, this ‘mad man’ (who rejects being called that way) sneaks into the man’s room for 7 nights to make his actual murder perfect. From these, most of the readers feel frightened since the reason for his murder and the method are so unusual and it lies out of normal range of prediction. We often feel horrified when we get to know about ‘psychopaths’ around us since their thoughts are highly unpredictable, and they usually don’t show their madness until they actually commit crimes. I guess that’s the part where we feel horror, and where shows that this story falls into the category of Gothic.

The specific depiction of the man’s emotions is another part that makes us feel tension and horror. For example, the author illustrates the emotion and actions of the mad man when he was silently sneaking into the old man’s room in the darkness. The writer also shows specific emotions and thoughts of this man, and increases readers’ fear even more. This hits its peak at the last part of the story, where the man hears the old man's heart beating louder and louder.

Some might say this story contains mystery, but I thought this book can’t be a mystery. There is a chance of myself being wrong, but from my point of view, this story can never be mysterious about something. I can see that there are many scenes and elements that can be a mystery, but the point is, the murderer himself is the narrator. Since we already know who is the murderer, why and how he killed the victim and so on, there is no curiosity that can rise from this crime for the readers. Still, the overall atmosphere and the fear it is creating lets the story be a good example of Gothic literature.

To be honest, I didn’t enjoy reading it since the story was all about a murderer and his madness, so it couldn’t be a comfortable type of story to read. I don’t hate it though-I surely found out that it is not only scary and frightening, but is valuable from the aspects of literature as well.