Who Watches Over Whom in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'? Ageing and the Fictionalisation of a National Allegory

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2010Suggested citation
Miquel Baldellou, Marta;
.
(2010)
.
Who Watches Over Whom in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'? Ageing and the Fictionalisation of a National Allegory.
Odisea, 2010, núm. 11, p. 123-136.
https://doi.org/10.25115/odisea.v0i11.311.
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The change of perception towards youth and age, and by extension, towards
national dependence and independence, can be signi cantly detected in the cultural and
literary discourses of nineteenth-century America. Edgar Allan Poe depicted the victimisation
and stigmatisation of the elderly as a re ection of the American ambivalent
perceptions towards the ageing population in mid-nineteenth-century. In Poe’s “The
Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), a young narrator acknowledges both his love and contempt for
an old man whom he watches over, as he permanently feels the overwhelming perpetual
vigilance the old man’s Evil Eye exerts over him, which ultimately urges the narrator
to murder his senior. The narrator experiences both freedom and remorse as a result of
his crime, feeling both released from his obligations and tormented by his guilt. Taking
Poe’s tale as a case in point, this article is aimed at depicting the process of cultural
stigmatisation and victimisation of the aged, as well as the unconscious social remorse
in nineteenth-century America, as a re ection of the country’s process of growth.
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