The Tale-Tale Heart

The Tale-Tale Heart
                                                                                            -Adgar Allan Poe

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a very surprising story of Adgar Allan Poe, a famous American short story writer. In this story, Poe makes his narrator unfold in minute details the many folds of a mystery and leads his readers to the shock of the end.

The narrator of the story is not willing to accept himself as a mad man. He describes that he is gifted with the acute sense of hearing. He wants to prove himself a healthy person, and to prove this he tells a murder case. He describes in detail how did he planned the murder.

The narrator was not fond of the old man. He didn’t have any passion to get the wealth of the old man; neither had he been treated ill by the old man. But he hated the eyes of the old man very much and to get rid of those eyes, he planned to kill the old man. He treated the old man very well before he killed the old man so that the old man could not feel that he was planning to kill him. The narrator entered many times into the room of the old man at mid night, but he could not kill him because the eyes of the old man were closed.

On the eighth night, he secretly entered into the room of the old man holding the dark lantern in his hand. It took him hours to enter into the room of the old man. But suddenly the old man moved on his bed. He thought that the fear of the old man was growing because he sat up on his bed listening. Later, the narrator opened the lantern, the thin ray of the light fell directly on the eyes of the old man. When the narrator saw those terrible eyes, he ran towards the bed and pulled the old man down from his bed. He killed the old man putting the bed over him. The old man gave a loud cry when he was pulled down.

Then the narrator cut the dead body into pieces and hides them under the wooden floor. It was almost 4 o’clock in the morning when he finished his job. But two policemen arrived there because the neighbors had informed the police when they heard the loud cry in the house. The police could not get anything from him. He put his chair over the place where he had hidden the body and began to talk with the police. The policemen were convinced with his answers and his behaviors but he could not control himself when he heard the sound of the clock ticking which he mistook as the beating of the heart of the old man, and revealed his crime to the police.