The Tell-Tale Heart Analysis

The Tell-Tale Heart is a classic story by Edgar Allan Poe. In this story the narrator is trying to prove that he is not a madman by calmly recalling of how he murdered an old man. But at the story we can not actually say that the narrator murdered the old man or was it just his imagination. The narrator could be confusing in court or is in a mental asylum. Throughout the story there is no clue to tell whether the narrator is a man or a woman. There is no clear clue to tell the relationship of the narrator and the man. The narrator murdered the old man because one of his eye resembles a vulture. Every time the narrator sees the eyes it makes his/her blood go cold. It seems that the narrator only wants to kill the old man when the eye is open. It took him eight nights to kill the man. For the first seven nights when he shone a light on the old man's eye it was close, but in the eighth night it was open.

When the narrator hears the beating of a heart, he/she thinks it belongs to the old man. To me this proves the narrator is mad. It is impossible to know for certain if the beating is a supernatural effect, his imagination, or an actual sound. One good guess is that he was hearing the sounds that death-watch beetles make. One variety of death watch beetles raps its head against surfaces, presumably as part of a mating ritual, while others emit a ticking sound. They are associated with quiet, sleepless nights and are named for the vigil (watch) kept beside the dying or dead, and by extension the superstitious have seen the death watch as an omen of impending death.Whatever the sound may have been, it mix with the narrator's guilt, caused him to confess the murder.