The Tell Tale Heart Guilt

“Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.” This was said by Plautus, who was a famous Roman playwright. Plautus is essentially saying that the mind of any person who knows of his mistakes is heavily burdened and anguished from guilt and regret. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a short-story written by Edgar Allen Poe, perfectly displays a person that Plautus described in this quote.
“The Tell-Tale Heart” begins with a man explaining that he desires to kill an old man living with him. The narrator describes how the old man has an eye that is evil and decides to kill him therefore ending the eye as well. It takes 8 days of carefully sneaking into the man's bedroom until he kills him, for he was waiting for the perfect time to strike. The first seven nights the man deems it not the right moment to destroy the evil eye because the old man was sleeping. But on the eighth …show more content…
As “The Tell-Tale Heart” progresses the narrator begins to doubt killing the old man. As mentioned earlier, the narrator entered the old man’s room and entered silently then saying “and this I did for seven long nights - every night just as midnight - but I found the eye closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (1). The narrator could have killed the old man during any one of those seven nights yet he didn’t. He had the perfect opportunity seven times but he never took it. Although on the eighth night something was different, the old man was awake. While waiting for the right time to commit the deed he heard the old man’s beating heart, saying “it grew louder, I say, louder every moment! Do your mark me well I have told your that I am nervous: so I am” (2). This shows how he slightly skittish about killing the old man, despite being so sure about it earlier in the story. About the middle of the story the narrator delays murdering the old