In the following essay, Pillai considers "The Tell-Tale Heart" as a text that expresses a complicity between the fictional narrator and the reader of the narrative, and a breach in the conventional border between literature and criticism; this breach results in what Pillai calls a narrative's "afterlife. "

In the following essay, Rajan asserts that the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is female, and contends that a new, gender-marked rereading of the tale, as filtered through theories of narrativity inspired by Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Hélène Cixous, reveals "The narrator's exploration of her female situation in a particular feminist discourse. "

In the following essay, Rajan contends that by using analytic tropes developed by Jacques Lacan and Helene Cixous, the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" can be identified as female.

In the following essay, Benfey studies Poe's exploration of "the unreadable in human relations," the opacity that separates one person from another, in the short stories "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart".

In the following excerpt, Bonaparte offers a Freudian reading of "The Tell-Tale Heart, " asserting that the old man in the story resembles Poe 's stepfather, on whom the author sought to enact his Oedipal revenge.

In the following essay, Reilly asserts that the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a paranoid schizophrenic who really hears the rapping of the death-watch insect (a species of beetle or louse which makes a noise that is said to presage death), which he mistakes for the beating of the old man's heart.

In the following essay, Bynum asserts that Poe and his reading audience alike were familiar with the thencurrent debate about "Moral insanity" and points out that while readers of "The Tell-Tale Heart" are drawn into the mind of a deranged killer, they still identify with the terror of his victim because of their frame of reference outside the text.

In the following essay, Zimmerman demonstrates that Poe's narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" displays characteristic signs of what was in Poe's day classified broadly as "Moral insanity" and today diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia. Zimmerman also makes the case that Poe's sophisticated insight into his character's psychology suggests the author did considerable research into his protagonist's condition using scientific texts and journals in or...

In the essay that follows, Zimmerman analyzes the ways in which "The Tell-Tale Heart" anticipates the psychological concept of paranoid schizophrenia, and concludes that Poe belongs to that group of "modern artists who find in science not a threat but an ally."

In the following essay, Robinson discusses the principles of thematic repetition and variation of incident in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and demonstrates how the story's two major themes—the psychological handling of time and the narrator's identification with his victim—are dramatized in Poe's other works.

In the following essay, Robinson provides a general overview of major themes in the story and focuses upon its dramatization of "self destruction through extreme subjectivity."

In the following excerpt, Kopley offers insights into the critical reception, principal themes, and structure of "The Tell-Tale Heart" as he argues that that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Poe's contemporary, used elements of the story in his novel The Scarlet Letter.

In the following essay, Gargano analyzes the symbolism in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and contends that the images in the tale point to the fact that, unbeknownst to the narrator, his real foe is not Death, but Time.

In the essay that follows, Gargano argues that the primary conflict of the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" involves "the tyranny of time."

In the following essay, Hoffman examines the motif of the eye in "The Tell-Tale Heart" and explores the relationship of the deranged narrator and his victim.

In the following essay, Witherington argues that the reader of "The Tell-Tale Heart, " seduced by the narrator into participating vicariously in his crime, is transformed into "An active voyeur" and "An accomplice after the fact" in the old man's murder.

In the essay that follows, Witherington contests the apparently self-evident diagnosis of madness often applied to the narrator of the short story by taking into account Poe's more subtle engagement of the reader's assumptions and expectations.

In the following essay, Halliburton draws attention to Poe's use of sound and his depiction of the narrator as both victimizer and victim in "The Tell-Tale Heart. "

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. "

In the following essay, Canario discusses "The Tell-Tale Heart" as the narration of a dream, with its sense of intermingled clarity and obscurity, along with its increasing implausibility.

In the following essay, Canario argues that the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the "deranged victim of a hallucinatory nightmare" about death.

In the following excerpt, Ward points out that the lack of motive on the part of the narrator is a major flaw in "The Tell-Tale Heart. "