The Tell-Tale Heart: Literary Analysis.
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that deals with the narrators struggle to convince the reader he is not insane. It is told from a first person point of view so the reader only has one side of the story to work with. Therefore, the reader only knows what the narrator thinks and sees. However, in the end narrator does reveal his insanity, and he reveals it through his obsessions. .
In the story the man for eight consecutive nights goes to the bedroom of an old man he is taking care of. He stands at the door watching the man sleep with a single ray of light pointing directly at the old mans "evil eye" which he despises of. On the eighth night, the old man is sitting up in bed with his eye open, and the man, enraged by the eye and the sound of the man's beating heart, races into the room and kills the man in his bed. After the murder, the narrator dismembers the body, and buries the old man under his floor. At the end of the story the police come to investigate the screams that were heard by the neighbors. Just as the man had convinced the police there was no foul play the man reveals his true self. He hears the sounds of the beating heart under the floor and in fear that the police will hear it he finally admits to the crime he had committed.
The theme of the story is that one can only put on a front for so long but eventually your real self will reveal. As the story progresses, the man continually tries to convince the reader he is not insane, but his attempts drastically fail in the end. The narrator had an obsession with the old man's eye. The idea of the "evil eye" eventually becomes his motive for the old man. "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!" he stated in the story (Poe 441.) The man was clearly mad and the sound of the old mans beating heart was the biggest proof of this.