A Narratological Analysis of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Abstract

This article analyzes Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” from a narratological perspective, investigating the construction of meaning through the narrative pattern.  Although, Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” has been the focus of much literary criticism since its publication, that is, some researchers have focused on the morality aspect of the story, whilst others have focused on the psychological and stylistic analysis of the short story, yet a comprehensive scholarly research has not been   carried out on its narratological aspects. This paper aims to fill this gap by putting the short story in the narratological framework and unfolding the narrative patterns through which meaning is constructed and effects created. This study takes Peter Barry’s ‘Joined-up’ narratology (Story/Plot distinction, Aristotle’s three key elements in the plot, Gérard Genette’s steps of Narrative Discourse) as a theoretical framework and uses the textual analysis technique to interpret the narrative patterns in the story. The study is qualitative and utilizes the textual analysis technique to decode the meaning of the text and find narrative patterns, and argues that approaching “The Tell-Tale Heart” through these mainly technical narratological categories offer new paradigms that shows how meanings are constructed in narratives and how audience/readers are engaged in the narratives through these technicalities The study draws the primary source material from Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” with secondary sources from research articles and books.