This is a story by an unnamed narrator who opens by speaking to the reader and
claiming that he is nervous but not mad. He says that he is going to tell a story in which
he will defend his sanity yet confess to having killed an old man. His motivation to kill
was not for desire for money, but fear of the mans eyes. Again, he insists that he is not
crazy because his cool and measured actions, though criminal, are not those of a
Every night, he went to the old man's apartment and secretly observed the man
sleeping. He did this for many nights; this was put in the narrators view because he was
telling the reader the story. He went into great detail through out the story in viewing this
old man sleep. This point of view contributes too many aspects of the story and gives it a
sort of gravity which pulls the reader into it more and more. It is much better this way
because you can see how the narrator convinces himself he is not crazy yet he kills a
helpless man and cuts him up and puts him under the floor boards.
The main theme of this short story is love vs. hate. This short story is the result of
the narrator's love for himself and hatred of his rival (being the old man). The narrator
loves himself, but when feelings of self-hatred come up in him, he projects that hatred
onto another person. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator confesses a love for an old man
but he then violently murders and cuts him up. The narrator reveals his madness by
attempting to separate the old man, which he loves, from the old man's eyes, which
makes the narrator mad. He then takes the cut up body and puts in his apartment under
the floor so he can always be close to the old man. But when the police come he has such
feelings for the old man that he begins to go mad by hearing the mans heart beat because
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