He was a very skillful artist that has created remarkable short stories. No one has outdone him in creating an atmosphere of morbid horror in such tales as in "The Tell-Tale Heart". Edgar Allan Poe's name is synonymous with horror, dark and macabre. He has perfected the psychological thriller. One of Poe's most famous stories is "The Tell-Tale Heart" in which a maniacal murderer is subconsciously haunted into confessing his guilt. The story is more than just a scary story. It's a detailed masterpiece. It contains motifs such as the eye, the heart, the unstable narrator, and the ambiguous time. .
One of his most common motifs is the eye. Sometimes referred to as an "orb," the eye has long been considered a window to the soul. To the narrator the old man's eye is evil and the narrator fears it. Through the narrator, Poe describes this eye, "One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture-a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold." The belief of the evil eye centers around the idea that those who possess the evil eye have the power to harm people or their possessions by merely looking at them. To protect oneself from the power of the eye, certain measures can be taken. . "I saw it with perfect distinctness--all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones.- .
Another motif in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the heart. The heart is important as both the physical "pump" of the body and as the center of all feeling and experience. The narrator said he loved the old man but he had to kill me to get rid of the evil eye. "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.For his gold I had no desire. I think that it was his eye!" The narrator hears the old man's heart beating when he is visited by the police. Poe writes ".It was a low, dull, quick sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.
