Lost in Adaptation: How “The Tell-Tale Heart” Loses Its Soul on Screen
Many stories have video adaptations built on the original story with less depth and sophistication. These video adaptations, which are often easier to understand, lose the story’s main focus. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe and its video adaptation depict a paranoid narrator who believes the blind eye of an old man is an “evil eye” resembling that of a vulture. The narrator stealthily creeps up to the man every night for a week, planning to kill the “evil eye.” On the eighth night, the narrator accidentally wakes up the old man, having to kill him as he opens his so-called evil eye. While the adaptation captures the horror and fear of the original, it shifts the focus from the narrator’s mind and his struggles with mental illness to the horror and suspense of a murder story, causing the video to lack substance and depth. The adaptation’s failure at character depth and development, omission of details, and lack of complexity of the conflict ultimately causes it to shift away from the original story’s goal to raise awareness about mental health.
The adaptation’s failure to fully develop the character has a great impact on the main focus of the story. The adaptation lacks thoughts from the main character. The main character believes that “the disease had sharpened [his] senses–not destroyed–not dulled them.” He also believes that the old man’s eye resembles a vulture’s and “whenever it fell upon [him], [his] blood ran cold.” However, the adaptation lacks these reasons, resulting in shallow character development, making it harder for the audience to understand the main motives for the murder missing out on narrator’s assertions of ideas of sanity, the audience does not fully grasp the element of mental illness in shaping the actions of the narrator the story. The adaptation also overlooks the carefulness of the narrator when he creeps up on the old man every night. The original text describes the meticulous actions of the narrator as he says, “it took [him] an hour to place my whole head within the opening.” Unlike the original text, the adaptation does not mention any of the details. The care and precision of the main character are his main reasons for believing he is sane, but the adaptation fails to transfer that to the audience. These factors, which are crucial to the depth and development of the character, are not conveyed in the adaptation, causing the story to steer away from the main idea. The story, on the other hand, has these elements, ultimately resulting in more depth and focus.
Besides failing to show the depth and the motives of the character, the adaptation also omits many details from the plot, which contributes to the adaptation shifting away from the main idea. The adaptation of the story misses details from the original story, including the narrator’s inside perspective. When the narrator is about to kill the old man, many details are excluded from the adaptation. For example, the narrator was “hearkening to the death watches in the wall.” This is naturally impossible and shows his insecurity, which is missed in the adaptation. In the story, the narrator also talks about how “[he] could bear [the police’s] hypocritical smiles no longer.” However, the narrator believed that the police’s smiles were hypocritical, even though they could not hear the beating of the old man’s heart. This thought from the narrator shows that he’s making up the hypocritical smiles of the policeman, which shows his insanity. As the video adaptation needs to keep the audience entertained, it often omits many details. These details could help the adaptation stray from the main idea, as shown in this adaptation.
The adaptation also lacks the complexity of the conflict, which is important for the main idea. In the original story, “the [narrator loves] the old man” but still decides to kill him. If the narrator loves the old man, then why does he kill him? This explanation makes the conflict more complex, showing that there is another part that comes into play. In this case, the other part is the disease that the narrator has, which leads him to kill the old man for his eye. The adaptation does not mention anything about the narrator’s feelings for the old man, making it less complex, straying away from the main idea. Another way that the story has less complexity is by making the eight nights happen faster than in the story. To keep the audience entertained, the adaptation removes parts of the story where the narrator is sneaking around patiently. On the eighth night, the part before the murder takes place is removed, highlighting the suspense of the action. When the narrator accidentally wakes up the old man in the original text, “[he keeps] quite still and [says] nothing. For a whole hour, [he] did not move a muscle.” The seven days of waiting leading to the murder, while the main character could have killed the old man in his sleep, show the complexity of the conflict. The main character, despite wanting to rid himself of the eye, does not intend to murder the old man. The omission of this detail in the adaptation makes the killing come across as a premeditated murder, turning the conflict into a simple murder case. These factors show the complexity of the conflict in the original story, which is missing in the adaptation. His madness is slowly described by the story, but is rushed in the adaptation, causing the audience to focus on the suspense aspect.
Through the adaptation’s failure at character depth and development, omission of details, and lack of complexity of the conflict, the adaptation shifts away from mental illness to horror and suspense to keep the reader entertained. Many video adaptations like this one stray away from the main story, causing less depth and focus on the main topic. Video adaptations are often used to entertain people, making them less sophisticated and more focused on how to keep people watching the video. This change to the story will make a huge impact on how it is delivered. Reading how the author used careful and slow language to build up the suspense carefully is different from watching the fast build-up and instant suspenseful moments. Original texts or books are often better to read for many reasons, such as knowing the character’s inner thoughts and moving along the plot slowly.