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The Tell-Tale Heart Symbolism

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The beating heart is symbolic of our narrator's intense feelings of guilt over what he has done. When investigators arrive, his own beating heart begins to antagonize him, and our narrator hears its pangs as the victim's heart pumps beneath his floorboards. The narrator loses it once and for all as he rips up his floorboards to reveal the dead body he was stashing, which was a direct result of his own heartbeat mimicking that of his deceased victim. In this sense, the beating heart represents truth and how it will ultimately come out. Lastly, the bed in "The Tell-Tale Heart" symbolizes the opposite of what beds and bedrooms are for. The narrator violates everything that the bedroom represents by exploiting the vulnerability of one who is sleeping.
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