The short story “A Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe is written in the first person perspective of a madman who, over the course of a week, creeps into what the reader believes to be his old father’s bedroom, and plots about how to kill him, simply because of his cloudy blue raven-eye. He obsesses over the eye to such an extent that he doesn’t even see the eye as part of the old man, thus seeing the murder of his father as a reasonable way to eliminate the eye. On the eighth night of the story, he accomplishes his goal of murdering the old man, ridding himself of the eye forever. The night-time setting throughout the story adds to the suspenseful mood, especially when the narrator initially enters his father’s room. At the end of the text, when police are searching his house, the narrator believes he hears the beating of his dead father’s heart, even though he already killed him. He tries to ignore the beating, but cannot, and confesses to the crime, even though the police didn’t …show more content…
When the narrator admits his crime, it makes the reader wonder if it is ever worth doing something that has such strong mental, emotional, and physical consequences. It also makes one realize that the narrator isn’t sane, especially when he explains how the idea of murdering his father first came to him: "It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever (Poe