Is "The Tell Tale Heart" a piece of Gothic Literature?

Gothic was what supporters of romanticism craved for starting from the 18^th century.

Apart from Classicism, Gothic focused on feelings and true human nature. These were

 described in a highly excited tone to sound as emotional as possible. Edgar Allan Poe

 was one of the pioneers of Gothic in American literature. Inevitably, “The Tell-Tale

Heart”has four major characteristics of Gothic literature: romantic, mystery, thriller, and

horror.

Fundamentally, Gothic literature consists of romanticism characteristics. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is no exception. Exclamation marks and emotional adjectives are frequently used in this novel, and there are many other illustrations that may provoke great excitement among readers. Personally, the beginning and the ending part especially seemed to be all about this. In the first and the second paragraph, the narrative does not logically explain why he is so nervous. He does not tell readers a single thing about why he killed the poor old man. Instead, he repetitively gives unorganized excuses that overflow with strong feelings. So is the ending scene, when the narrative expresses the heartbeats of the dead old man. The entire story is illustrated without any “formal” structure. The sentences do not have an end; they make no point. But they do covey one thing –the narrative is extremely honest to his own feelings.

Due to its romantic aspects, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is full of mysteries. To emphasize abrupt, emotional expressions, Poe intentionally and continuously omitted the "cause" in the cause-and-effect model. As a result, the outcomes of events create a remarkably big impact, whereas the reason why they happened is unclear. For instance, there are no implications about why the narrative feels hatred to the old man's eye. Why didn't the old man react to the narrative if his eyes were open? Why do the heartbeats suddenly pound upon the narrative? Readers have no idea about these mysterious events. Who is the narrative, to begin with? Even this is not implied at all. This triggers huge interest among readers and allows them to understand the story based on mere intuition and their own "feelings". Combined with the romantic illustrations, this enabled Poe to realize Gothic in this novel.

As already shown in previous works such as "The Black Cat", Edgar Allen Poe did not write stories for innocent children. As an advocator of Gothic arts, Poe was highly interested in the “outburst” of agitated feelings: horror and thrill. His illustration of the narrative entering the old man’s room for seven days and killing him on the eighth day literally gave me “goose bumps”. The immersion and terror of readers reach the climax when it is found that the old man had been awake all along. Similarly, the moment when heartbeats of the dead man pound on the narrative-making him terrified and scream-evokes tremendous thrill and horror. Undoubtedly, the horrifying plot did its job. However, the tone, vocabulary, and proper usage of exclamation marks also arouse a great deal of thrill and horror. This makes “The Tell-Tale Heart” as a fine piece of Gothic literature.

Gothic was highly favored by romanticists because it promoted diversity and freedom. But Edgar Allen Poe was neglected by the mainstream of American literature when he was alive, and we do not even know where he is buried. His life was full of tragedies and mysteries. Maybe he wanted to escape the reality in his little ideal world. Perhaps this is why his literatures are not about pleasant topics, but seem to have a free spirit in themselves.