Ah, The Tell-Tale Heart. I remember reading this story in 8th grade and marveling at the darkness of Poe's stories. Granted, we had also read some of his other works, including The Raven, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Along with reading Poe's life story, you can see why one would marvel at such a thing.
The Tell-Tale Heart is a story about a man bothered by an old man's "Evil Eye". The man is so bothered by the Eye that he decides to kill the man. After killing the man and hiding the body, the police show up. Investigating a scream that was reported by the neighbors, the police search the house and find nothing. The man, who claims to hear the beating old the old man's heart cannot bear it any longer and confesses to the police officers.
Beginning with the main character. . . He is the narrator and presumed to be mad, backed up by the fact that he denies he is so. He is scared by the Evil Eye, but has nothing against the man; he can only kill the man when he can see his eye. I think he is telling the truth, he really does not think he is mad and he truly believes the Eye is evil. When the police come search the house, he believes he hears the beating of the heart. I think he is still scared by the Evil Eye. He clearly has no guilt about killing the man and yet hears the heart. I think that he was truly shaken by the eye and with whatever mental illness he has, he cannot escape that fear. He is driven mad by it and tries to find excuses as he tells his audience in his story (which I believe he wrote possibly in jail sell, after going through this ordeal, to show he is not mad). He is truly an example of the dark side of Poe to marvel at.
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