Edgar Allan Poe's Tentacles Longer Than Night

At first glance, Edgar Allan Poe's literary works solely anchor the supernatural in the real world to shock and entertain. After all, isn't that what horror is meant to do? Obviously, there are no deeper meanings hidden among all the unease and spookiness. People are just supposed to feel scared, right? However, through the philosophy of horror framework that Eugene Thacker develops in Tentacles Longer Than Night, I argue that Edgar Allan Poe forces his readers to walk the line between the uncanny and the marvelous in order to embody the consuming power of emotions in "The Tell-Tale Heart." That is, Poe highlights the intrusive nature of emotions like fear and guilt by mixing supernatural aspects with reason: if the emotions are strong enough, they will envelop a person to the point that they feel real. Emotions are irrationality at its finest, but they undermine the ruling reason

Or as Eugene Thacker puts it: "mis-reading works of horror as if they were works of philosophy" in order to raise ideological questions (Thacker 9). The works of horror are no longer just fiction- instead, they exist as an extension of our reality where we what we consider rational is taken apart and questioned. In the case of "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe is bringing emotions and logic to the surgeon's table: does logic overrule emotions every time? By asking this, Poe is destabilizing the reality where reason rules and creating a moment "in which everything is up for grabs, nothing is certain, the ground giving way beneath our feet" (Thacker 10). This is a moment of uncertainty that allows the unknown to be examined. In order to examine the question of emotions over reason, then, Poe expands this singular moment over the entire short story by keeping the audience on their toes about the sanity and reliabity of the