The Use of Irony in

Like many of Edgar Allen Poe’s works, “The Tell-Tale Heart� is full of death
and darkness. Poe used many of the real life tragedies he experienced as inspiration for
his gothic style of writing. Poe dealt with many aspects of death and madness in his
stories, madness again is playing a key role in the plot. In this short story Poe used
literary devices such as point of view, irony, and symbolism to give it a more dramatic effect and add to the madness the narrator portrays.
Poe’s use of the point of view device is very evident in “The Tell-Tale Heart.�
According to Bonaparte, the madman that speaks through the entire story talks in an unreliable first person view (126). Because of the man’s obvious madness it is not definite what is taking place in the introduction and what the actual events of the story were. There is a definite madness in the man’s attitude and he is constantly aware of it yet he makes many claims that he is not mad at all. “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded-with what caution-with what foresight-with what dissimulation I went to work!Ha!-would a madman have been so wise as this?� (Poe 121).

Robinson feels that by using this irony the narrator creates a feeling of hysteria, and the turmoil resulting from this hysteria is what places "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the list of the greatest horror stories of all time (94). “The murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt. By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is deranged” (Thompson 53).

Marie Bonaparte sees an obscure symbolistic link between the old man and Poe's adoptive father in real life, John Allan, and between the narrator in the story and Poe. There are several similarities between the old man and Allan. Both men had blue eyes. According to Bonaparte, much like the old man, had never wronged the narrator, Allan had never wronged Poe. Similarities abound between Poe and the narrator, as well. Neither had a wish for riches, and they both behaved affectionately to their other's face even though they despised him behind his back. Bonaparte suspects that the story was an outlet for Poe's bottled up aggression toward his adoptive father (497).

Without point of view, irony, and symbolism being a main component in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” this story would lack interest, depth, emotion, and would not help mold all of the elements together. The narrator seems to live in a contradicting lifestyle, or that his subconscious thoughts are opposite from that of his conscious ones. Point of view, irony, and symbolism can be a big part of any kind of literature or art, and it will take a reader to different places than originally imagined.

One observation regarding time is made by A. Robert Lee. Lee sees time used symbolically in the rhythm of the heartbeats. Lee envisions the narrato