Edgar Allen Poe's 'Tell-Tale Heart'

Imagine looking at everything in the perspective of a killer. Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” a short story that takes place in the late 1800s, puts you in the shoes of a killer. An unnamed person, the narrator, can hear things in hell, heaven, and earth. A caretaker of an old man with a film over his eye, the narrator acts sweet by day, and suspicious by night. Felt by the narrator, is a desire to kill, because he believes the eye is evil. Every night at twelve o’clock, the narrator peeks into the old man’s room to look at his closed eye. On the eighth night, the narrator finds that the old man’s eye is open. Light from the narrator’s lantern is shown as a single ray on the open eye. Frightened, the narrator accidentally makes a noise,

Still for an hour, the narrator finally throws a large mattress over the old man, suffocating him. Dismembering the body, the narrator hides it under the floorboards. Police come to investigate the noise the old man made, when the narrator discusses that it was a nightmare, as he sits on the boards the old man is under. Louder and louder, a noise of a heartbeat rings in the narrator’s ears, which cause him to confess his crime. Throughout the plot, time and time again, it proves that the narrator is a calculated killer, instead of a mentally insane one. The narrator is a calculated killer because he premeditated the murder and took precautions for the concealment of the body. Justifying his actions, the narrator says to the reader,“You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work!” (3). The narrator paid extreme attention and detail to