Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story told through the eyes of a mentally unstable man, whose identity remains unknown throughout the story. His insanity quickly becomes obvious as the story progresses, as we can transparently perceive the deterioration of his mental state. The first-person narrative point of view plays an important role in making this story captivating, he constantly denies being mad and even tries to convince the reader he is not insane, yet his thoughts make us think otherwise: « I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story. » The narrator catches the readers' attention right from the beginning when he states that he has decided to take the life of the old man.

The relationship between the narrator and the old man remains a mystery throughout the story; he says he loves the old man and wants nothing to do with his gold, which hints us that the man is someone close to him, but this does not overcome the overwhelming need to eliminate the eye. In his deranged mind, he perceives the old man and the pale blue eye as two completely separate entities; this is shown when he states « it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye