About the author – The author of this article Subhendu Bikash Tahal is a Lecturer in Political Science.
The only a way to escape the reality is to go fictional and live in the midst of characters populated by the figment of a writer’s rich imagination. The reality is grim, so grim that it makes one afraid with its hard facts and soft pretence. The day was not hectic. I had a plan to do something, to read some academic stuff, to go for a long hour sleep. But the mood swings faster than the pendulum. While surfing internet over a cup of tea The Tell -Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe appeared from nowhere. The titled captured my imagination. It is dramatic to say that the title was enthralling nonetheless interesting. As the modern practice goes when something interesting appears over the screen of a phone that makes an excellent bait taking one farther from the intended objective and closer to something which was never conceived at the first place.
The title of the story worked exactly like a bait for me capturing my attention and compelling me to read the entire story. It’s a short story. The story begins with the assertion that I had been and am nervous but definitely not mad. That sentence conjured up in my mind of a character which is being wrongly perceived as a mad man but indeed he isn’t. And the story ends with a confession that “I admit the deed! – tear up the planks! – here, here!” The last sentence is indicative of the confession of a crime committed. A psychological trait – nervousness, dominates throughout the story. Whether the man is mad or not would only come up as we proceed form one stanza to the other. But he is nervous and the dominance of nervousness makes the story a psychological one.
The story proceeds swiftly with ease while carrying a baggage of contradiction at its back. The narrator of the story kills an old man. He compares the eyes of the victim with that of a vulture. That eye irritates the narrator and the narrator at the end being taken over by the passion kills the victim. However, some strange assertion by the narrator would puzzle you as a reader. The narrator who killed the victim writes “Object there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire”. Then why did he kill the old man? The narrator claims that the eyes of the old man which resembled that of a vulture annoyed him and that was the reason why he killed that old man.
The narrator’s love of the old man and his murder of the victim in the same paragraph is an apparent contradiction. It is a contradiction because a murderer can’t be a lover and a lover can’t murder the person to whom he loves. Murder is an action of last resort; it is committed not out of love but extreme hatred propels one to commit such a heinous offence. Though literally love and murder are not antonyms yet they are antithetical. Love as a psychological trait brings out a strong sense of care and a protective blanket. Either the assertion of the narrator that he loved the old man was sheer pretence or there are some major psychological flaws in him.
The claim that he loved the old man but the eyes of the old man irritated him is an attempt by the writer to separate the old man from the eye. To simplify this, it means that he loved the old man but not his eyes. If we love someone a minor flaw in the body is always ignored. But the narrator killed the old man because of his annoying eye while loving all other parts of the body. This underscores two important things – first, either the writer has not been successful to bridge the contradiction in his writing or the writer strives to justify the insanity of the narrator with which the short story begins.
There is another obvious contradiction which stares at the face of the reader waiting to be identified is that when the narrator says that he proceeded to kill the old man and dismembered the corpse to conceal it with great caution; but at the end he under no pressure from the cops discloses everything- the truth, the truth of killing the old man. Though, at times even a confident man discloses the truth to the cop, but only under severe pressure. But the manner in which here the narrator discloses the truth is bit awkward. The narrator was confident and there was no sign of suspicion, he himself writes “The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease.” But suddenly he grew pale. He said to himself that “I could bear those hypocritical sounds no longer!” And he revealed everything.
If he was at ease and there was no pressure from the police then revealing the truth to police symbolises the Madness. What is the point of meticulous planning if at the beat of a heart everything is revealed? A closer look at the text reveals that the narrator in his vigorous attempt to prove that he is not insane, himself confesses the crime by stating that he had made all the meticulous plan and only a sane man can make such plans. This is nothing but the insanity of an insane. The meticulous plan was made to conceal the crime yet the plan is being revealed to prove that he is sane.
The line is blurred between insanity and sanity, nervousness and confidence. A man is sane when he has the ability to overlook certain aspects and control himself. A sane man turns into insane immediately when he loses control over himself and passion takes over him; he behaves irrationally. The narrator throughout the story attempts to justify his irrational act to prove that he is a rational man. The attempt of the writer to show the fragility of the human mind and the consequence of obsession is a message worth reading. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Indeed, this is a story worth reading.
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