40 Fun Facts About The Tell-Tale Heart

In The Tell-Tale Heart, where does the narrator hide the old man's body after the murder?

Under the floorboards is where the remains go, and the narrator replaces the planks so neatly he boasts no human eye could spot anything wrong. Soon afterwards he is begging the police to tear them up.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator says the old man's filmy eye resembles that of which bird?

A vulture is the comparison, and the narrator's blood runs cold whenever that eye falls on him. He insists it was never the old man who vexed him, only the eye.

Which cartoon reworked The Tell-Tale Heart with a boss tormented by buried squeaky boots?

SpongeBob SquarePants did it in the 1999 episode Squeaky Boots, with the squeaks standing in for the beating heart. Mr. Krabs cracks, confesses to stealing the boots, then fries and eats them.

Ironically, the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart describes his murder in detail to prove what?

His sanity is the case he argues from the opening lines, pointing to how calmly and carefully he planned. The more precisely he explains himself, the more fully he admits to the killing.

How does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart describe his feelings for the old man he murders?

He loved him, the narrator says, adding that the old man had never wronged or insulted him. He names neither object nor passion for the crime, only the eye.

Which emotion is usually read into the phantom heartbeat that ends The Tell-Tale Heart?

Guilt is the usual reading: the officers suspect nothing, yet the narrator convinces himself they know everything. No one in the room accuses him except his own conscience.

On which animated sitcom does a girl swap a rival's Tell-Tale Heart diorama for a real cow's heart?

The Simpsons did it in Lisa's Rival, where a jealous Lisa sabotages new girl Allison's contest entry. Like Poe's narrator, Lisa cracks and fetches the real diorama from its hiding place.

Which sense does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart say his disease sharpened above all?

Hearing is the sense he boasts about, claiming he caught all things in heaven and earth and many things in hell. That boast sets up the beating only he seems to notice.

Two years after The Tell-Tale Heart, which 'Nevermore' poem made Edgar Allan Poe famous?

The Raven made Poe popular in his lifetime, though it brought him little money. Its speaker is tormented by a bird that keeps repeating a single word.

From which point of view is The Tell-Tale Heart told?

First person puts readers inside the killer's head with no outside view to test his story against. Poe never gives the narrator a name, a job or even a stated gender.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, what does the narrator use to cast one thin ray on the sleeping old man?

A dark lantern can be shut so that no light shines out, then opened a crack. The narrator undoes it ever so cautiously because its hinges creak.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, who alerts the police after the old man's single shriek in the night?

A neighbor reports the shriek, the very thing the narrator feared when he rushed in to silence the pounding heart. Three officers knock before dawn.

On which night of spying does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart finally kill the old man?

The eighth night is the one, after seven nights of finding the eye shut. This time the old man wakes, the eye is wide open, and the narrator's fury takes over.

At what hour does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart creep to the old man's door each night?

At midnight he turns the latch, then takes a full hour just to ease his head through the gap. He holds up that slowness as proof of how wisely he worked.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, what does the narrator pull over the old man to kill him?

The heavy bed does it: he drags the old man down and hauls it on top of him. Then he smiles while the muffled heart beats on for many minutes.

What does the old man in The Tell-Tale Heart cry out when a noise startles him on the fatal night?

"Who's there?" gets no answer: the narrator stands frozen for a whole hour while the old man sits up waiting. In all that time the old man never lies back down.

How does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart explain the night-time shriek to the visiting police?

His own cry in a dream is the story he gives, and the officers accept it. He is so sure of himself that he tells them to search the house, and search it well.

Where does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart tell the police the missing old man has gone?

Away in the country is his lie, backed up by showing the officers the old man's treasures, secure and undisturbed. He leads them through the whole house himself.

As police chat in The Tell-Tale Heart, what does the narrator first think the rising noise is?

A ringing in his ears is his first guess, along with a headache, so he talks faster and louder to drown it out. Then he decides the noise is not inside his head at all.

To what does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart twice compare the low, dull beating?

A watch wrapped in cotton is his image both times: once for the living heart, later for the sound that rises while the police sit chatting. The echo ties the two scenes together.

What single word does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart shriek at the officers as he confesses?

"Villains!" he shrieks, sure the smiling officers have known all along and are only toying with him. He orders them to dissemble no more and admits the deed.

Which exclamation is the very first word of The Tell-Tale Heart, a reply to an unseen listener?

"True!" opens the story as if answering an accusation readers never get to see. Critics read it as both an admission of the crime and a promise that the account can be trusted.

Which motive does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart dismiss, saying he had no desire for it?

His gold held no appeal, the narrator says, so greed is out. With insult and injury ruled out too, the only thing left for him to blame is the eye.

How does the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart claim he treated the old man in his final days?

Kinder than ever, he boasts, greeting the old man each morning in a hearty tone and asking how he passed the night. The warmth is part of the cunning he is so proud of.

Which kind of narrator do critics call the speaker of The Tell-Tale Heart?

Unreliable is the label: readers learn to trust the cracks in his account more than his own boasts. Critics see monomania where he sees skill.

The Tell-Tale Heart is often called a classic of which genre?

Gothic fiction is its home: like many characters in the genre, the narrator lets his nerves dictate his nature. Its horrors unfold in an old house at the dead hour of the night.

The Tell-Tale Heart opens with a conversation already under way: which Latin term names that device?

In medias res means into the middle of things, and readers never learn who is being addressed. Guesses include a judge, a prison warden, a reporter and a doctor.

Which horror novelist wrote The Old Dude's Ticker, a slangy 1970s retelling of The Tell-Tale Heart?

Stephen King has called his version a crazed revisionist telling of Poe's tale. At other times he has described it as satire, pastiche and affectionate homage.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, what color is the old man's film-covered eye that so torments the narrator?

Pale blue is how he first describes it, and on the fatal night he sees it as a dull blue under a hideous veil. The sight, he says, chills the very marrow in his bones.

In which city, his home from 1838 to 1844, did Edgar Allan Poe write The Tell-Tale Heart?

Philadelphia was Poe's home for about six years, the stretch that also produced The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Gold-Bug. Only one of his homes there still stands.

Which short-lived Boston magazine first printed The Tell-Tale Heart in its debut issue of January 1843?

The Pioneer folded after only three monthly issues, leaving its founder deep in debt. Poe mourned its end as a most severe blow to the cause of pure taste.

The first printing of The Tell-Tale Heart opened with lines from A Psalm of Life by which poet?

Longfellow's lines about hearts beating funeral marches to the grave sat above the story as an epigraph. Poe dropped them from his 1845 reprint, months after naming an older poem as their likely source.

Which actor narrated the Oscar-nominated 1953 animated short of The Tell-Tale Heart, voicing the killer?

James Mason voiced it for the studio UPA, and in 2001 the Library of Congress picked the film for the National Film Registry. It lost its Oscar to a Disney short.

British censors made the 1953 cartoon of The Tell-Tale Heart the first animated film to receive which rating?

An X certificate marked it as suitable only for adult audiences, a first for any cartoon in the United Kingdom. The short had been planned as a 3-D film but was released flat.

Some critics say the beating in The Tell-Tale Heart is really which insects ticking in the wall?

Deathwatch beetles tap on wood to attract mates, and superstition treats the sound as an omen of coming death. The narrator admits lying awake with them night after night.

Which British band put The Tell-Tale Heart to music on its 1976 debut album Tales of Mystery and Imagination?

The Alan Parsons Project built the whole album on Poe, with guest singer Arthur Brown taking this track. Parsons worried Brown would be the wrong fit until he recorded his vocal.

Which director made The Tell-Tale Heart an episode of his 2023 Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher?

Mike Flanagan created the eight-part series and directed that fifth episode himself. Most other episodes also borrow Poe titles, among them The Black Cat and The Masque of the Red Death.

Which horror film star recited The Tell-Tale Heart alone on screen in 1970's An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe?

Vincent Price performed four Poe tales in the film, each as a one-man recital. The other three were The Sphinx, The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, which blunder by the narrator makes the old man spring up?

His thumb slipping on tin makes the noise, just as he is about to let out the light. Moments earlier he had chuckled at his own cleverness and the old man had stirred.

In The Tell-Tale Heart, what does the narrator do to the old man's corpse before hiding it?

Dismembers it: he cuts off the head, the arms and the legs, working hastily but in silence as the night wanes. He offers the neat job as one more of his wise precautions.