The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story written in first person narrative. The main character of this story is the narrator who suffers from paranoiac hallucinations caused by the guilty from the murdering of an old man. The story begins when the narrator who is taking care of an old man feel irrational fear of the weird clouded eye. He gets so annoyed by the eye of that man that he decided to kill the old man. The narrator was so meticulous about murdering his victim that took eight nights to find the perfect moment to strike. He spent one hour every night just to open the door of the old man’s room. The old man walked up because of the sound of the narrator watches, so he decided to kill the old man in his own mattress. The narrator cut the body in pieces and hidden them under the floorboards. He cleaned the crime scene to cover any evidence while a neighbor who heard noise called the police. The narrator was confident about the fact that the police will not find any evidence until he began to ear the sound of heartbeat. He gets so paranoid because of the constant beating of the heart that he losses control and plead guilty of the crime. He showed the police the body hidden under the floorboards. Edgar Allan Poe is this story play with human mental process, consciousness, remorse feelings and obsessive behavior of the main character the killer. The author is more concerned with what is going on in one people mind.