SOURCE: "The Theme of Time in 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'" Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. V, No. 4, Summer, 1968, pp. 378-82.

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

The critic who wishes to read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" as a mere horror story may be content to accept its incidents as unmotivated and mysterious. How, the critic may argue, can the story be rationally explained when the narrator himself is at a loss to account for the frenzy inspired in him by his victim's "evil eye?" The critic may further maintain that Poe deliberately establishes and enhances the mystery of his tale by having the murderer eschew all explanations for his deed: "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man." The critic may conclude that Poe...