SOURCE: "That Spectre in My Path," in The French Face of Edgar Poe, Southern Illinois University Press, 1957, pp. 216-56.

In the following excerpt, Quinn considers the details Poe uses to convey the particular type of madness exhibited by the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart. "

To read "The Man of the Crowd" in conjunction with "The Tell-Tale Heart" is to become aware immediately of a number of resemblances between them. In the latter story, too, there is an old man; only this time it is not he who is "The type and the genius of deep crime," but rather the narrator himself. The narrator is the criminal; the story is an account of his crime and its discovery. If the pursuer of the man of the crowd had grasped the significance of what he had witnessed, and, in the insane hope of circumventing his destiny, had killed the man...