The Theme Of Mortality In Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

The major theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is one of human’s mortality. The narrator’s use of particular adjectives, reference to time, and major events in story prove his obsession with mortality. Trying to convince himself that he is beyond deaths reach, the narrator in the end realizes death is unavoidable. Arguments that guilt or time are the main theme is over simplifying the story, guilt and time are points used to prove the bigger theme of human’s mortality. Whether or not the narrator is sane or insane does not affect the theme and should not be considered a theme in itself, as death comes to all no matter what mental state they are in. It is mainly an argumentative point to rationalize his actions and

When we look at time, we all know that it is limited, no matter how much we would like it to continue. The argument that time is the theme of the story is because of the constant reference to it in the story, but time describes the painstaking actions of the narrator. Time throughout the story shows a methodical, planning out of events; examples would be, how much time he took before he actually murdered the old man such as, “whole week”, “took me an hour”, and “seven long nights.” (Poe) All of these reference how much time he took before he actually carried out the murder as if by doing this he may learn how to extend the time of his own death or referring to how death is looming waiting in the darkness. The narrator did not want to face the fact death was imminent and how one did not know when it would come, being obsessed with how you live your life just waiting to die. The waiting for death he describes when he states, “a watch's minute hand moves more quickly,” (Poe) showing that it is punishment to have to guess and wait for death. In saying, “opening the door, little by little,” (Poe) he describes the feeling of death sneaking up on you just as he is sneaking up on the old man. He mentions that, “For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night,

Understanding that death does not have to have a reason, but old and something considered evil will draw it closer to you. In the next event, he describes the time he spent watching and planning, controlling the time that death happens, hoping to learn something that would allow him to control his own fate. The next event when he startles the old man and waits a length of time before he carries out the murder is one of trying to hold off death. He was watching the man fear death, describing it in detail, “the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh, no!”, “I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him.” (Poe) While watching the old man fear for his life as he had often done stating, “I knew the sound well.” (Poe) Then describing how he felt, “Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him.” (Poe) He thought in doing this he would figure out a way to put off his own impending death. Consequently, he knew the man was hoping to elude death as he was trying to but at this point realizes it is in vain, death is imminent for