The Tell-Tale Heart

            In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" fear plays a large role. Fear is the main emotion as well as being the central theme of the story. Theme is a central subject or idea that is clearly evident in a piece of literature. In this short story all the characters feel fear in some way. The main character is the narrator, who never reveals his identity. For the narrator, fear is the motive to kill as well as the reason he turns himself in. The old man, the murder victim, feels fear when the narrator comes into his room at midnight hour of the eighth night. The neighbors, who hear the old man during the night, call the police as they also feel fear. .
             The narrator is clearly frightened of the old man. At first is may be hard to understand why. The reader can tell that the old man treats the narrator well when he says "I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insults" (36). However, the narrator is dreadfully afraid of the old man's pale blue eye as he explains, "but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye (36)." After having to look at the eye for several days the narrator kills the old man in an effort to end his fear. In fact, this is the only reason the narrator gives for murdering the old man. This shows that the narrator is mentally unstable and an unreliable character through which the theme is portrayed.
             At the end of the story the reader sees that even killing the old man has not dispelled the narrator's fear. He has buried the old man under the house, yet he believes that he can still hear the old man's heartbeat. In reality, the heartbeat he is hearing is his own since his conscience is bothering him. According to the narrator, the sound of the heart gets louder and louder to the point that he believes the police, who are inspecting the house, can hear it.