thetelltaleblog

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A Spotify playlist to listen to while you scroll through this blog!

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Welcome to The Tell-Tale Blog! 

This blog is formatted in a way that will let you scroll through each page as they are. It is my intention to make this presentation resonate with a contemporary audience so think of it as a more focused curated literary Pinterest. To be able to give the best possible outcome of all my interests in various multimedia forms, I've curated and compiled them all here.

Here, you will see my own write ups on The Tell-Tale Heart, the themes present in the story, and Edgar Allan Poe himself. Apart from this, you will see posts of other thinkers of our generation on these themes, as well as paintings, excerpts from other works of literature, clips from films or television shows, animations, songs, and a whole lot more! With all of them having a connection to the themes of The Tell-Tale Heart.

However, I understand that this may be overwhelming to see all at once. Which is why I’ve made it much easier to see these curations according to their themes or purpose!

On the bottom-most part of this blog you will see tabs with labels on them, but they’re also accessible when you access the ‘Search keywords’ search bar on the top right part of this blog! When you’re done looking at all the posts or reading the write ups for that theme, click on any of the home buttons closer to you and it will lead you back to the default home screen of the blog!

To access the online copy of The Tell-Tale Heart simply click this link.

The primary source used for the write ups is the Sixth Edition of The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction by Ann Charters. I have a physical copy of the book but if you, dear viewer, would like to access the pdf or ebook let me know through the ‘Express your thoughts’ tab and I will give you the link to a free alternative (wink wink I cannot find it anywhere at all online so we have to take matters into our own hands wink wink) Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 6th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

With all that said, have fun reading, scrolling, and learning!

- Nico, the curator

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If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul, you haven't experienced poetry.

Edgar Allan Poe

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just me, Edgar Allan Poe and our unhealthy coping mechanisms (romanticizing melancholy) against the world.

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Alberto Martini (1876–1954) - Edgar Allan Poe's ‘The Imp of Perverse’, 1908-09

source

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Sin.

Dead Christ (details) by Philippe de Champaigne

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On Poe & His Works (and Fans!)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) became a writer after his adoptive father, John Allan,  disinherited him. Unlike other authors of his time that championed optimism, nature, and transcendentalism, such as Emerson and Thoreau, Poe opted to look inside the deepest parts of human nature itself.  It is through his writings that he became internationally recognized as well. So much so that critics even say that Fyodor Dostoevsky, a renowned Russian novelist, even admired Poe’s works enough to be an inspiration for some of his most famous works. Dostoevsky adored Poe’s “strangely material” imagination which was done “with such stupendous plasticity that you cannot but believe in the reality or the possibility of a fact which actually never has occurred.” (1187) 

Picture from The Poetry Foundation

Moreover, Poe was described by Charles Baudelaire, a French poet who translated Poe’s works, as “le poète maudit” an alienated writer who “reflected the derangement of a hypocritical country” given that while authors promoted a life of self-reliance, individual freedom, and nonconformity, the country permitted still violent practices of slavery. 

Thus, the majority of Poe’s stories can be attributed to two categories: analytic tales where the modern detective story stemmed from and tales of gothic terror, psychological horror that ushered forth the modern horror story—this is where our focus text The Tell-Tale Heart falls. (Charters 1186)

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The Tell-Tale Heart (dir. Eric Spoeth)

Watch the entire short film through this link!

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Poe's use of Rhythmic Language

Excerpts from The Poe Museum

It not only mimics the narrator's slipping sanity but also his increasing paranoia. Remember: this is the first paragraph of the short story. Poe's expert use of rhythm and language sets both the tone of the story and the desired effect on the reader, this "unity of effect" that he believes to be the most essential quality of all successful short fiction. (Charters 1187)

Again he uses it here! Brilliant.

How did these sections of the story sound in your mind? Did it sound like this read through of the story by Matthew Gray Gubler?

However, to best articulate my own experience with it I would like you to listen to first, this reading of Rudyard Kipling's poem Boots (1915) by Taylor Holmes, then finally watch this rendition or edit by the user "hiffy" on YouTube.

How about it? Did it change the tone of the story for you?

Comment or send a thought to let us know!

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When Dostoevsky said, "Pain changes you, but it teaches. That is its mercy." but Kafka said, "Pain changes nothing. It just repeats itself until you forget who you were before it started."

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"The Brothers Karamazov", Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Constance Garnett)

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On Madness, Sanity, and our Worst Enemy

"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered by brain; but once it conceived, it haunted me day and night."

"The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream."

"I smiled---for what had I to fear?"

From the first few lines of the short story, we can already tell that the narrator is unreliable or is at the least trying to hold on to their sanity. Yet, rather than helping us clearly diagnose this narrator, Poe instead invites us to enter his own world, to embody his madness, and come to terms with our worst enemy---ourselves.

Questions worth pondering on:

What exactly is madness according to Poe? Is the narrator mad? Am I? Are you? Or is madness simply the inescapability of one's self to their own mind?

We can argue that the narrator's mind is self-consuming. How does Poe intensify and destabilize a Romantic aspect such as championing the importance of emotion?

How does this work in connection to inevitable guilt? Is guilt, like sin, innate to human nature?

Let us know! Comment or send us a thought!

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Dickinson on Madness

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‘Speak! Speak!’ 1895 by John Everett Millais (English, 1829–1896)

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James Tissot (French, 1836–1902)

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Demons of the Mind (1972) Mario Piovano

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Vincent Price

An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe ; Tell Tale Heart (1970)