The Tell-Tell Heart Literary Analysis

In the story the Tell-Tell Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator commits a crime. What was it you may be asking? Well let’s just say it got a little messy… The narrator had committed a murder crime by killing the Old Man that lived in the same house as him. Really creepy right, and this is how it happened.

This is all based on revenge, but not how you would think. The Old Man and the narrator had a good relationship, and you are probably wondering why he wants revenge, but the Old Man has a this weird eye that stares down right at him and the narrator has found it very uncomfortable by it for a while. Cleverly, every night for seven long nights always at twelve, he would sneak in the Old Man’s room. The narrator would watch over him while he sleeps and very quietly would open up his lantern just a little bit too where it shines upon the “pale blue eye”. Then, one night, he accidently woke up, very cautious, and would not go to sleep. The narrator began inpatient for the Old Man to fall asleep so he pounced on the Old Man and suffocated him with his own mattress.

It’s debatable whether or not he was insane before or after he killed the Old Man but based on the information …show more content…
It infers us that he did not find the Old Man’s eye comforting and that is why he was seeking revenge. Another quote from the story says, “The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard things in hell”. This particular quote tells us that he has been hearing these things for a while and that he is aware that he is insane. However, he thought that he was so slick that he wouldn’t get caught so he let the police inside his house as the sound of the heartbeat made him grow with