Plot Summary

Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about a narrator that is not named, who opens the story by telling the reader he is not mad, but nervous. The narrator continues to ramble on in the opening, skipping from topics about how he is perceived crazy; however, he is not. The story that he tells is about an old man that he takes care of and looks after. However, it takes a dark turn when he plans on taking his life and how he will “rid myself of the eye forever.”  The eye is a key theme throughout out the story and killing the old man will prevent the old man’s eye from looking at the narrator.  For a week, he gains the old mans trust but being overly nice to him before he commits the crime. The narrator cannot kill the old man until the eye is closed. However, the old man is a light sleeper and on the eighth night, the narrator enters the room to finish his plan. Inside the room, he waits for the old man to sleep, which turns out to be a problem as the old man calls out when he hears that somebody has entered the room. Although the narrator is silent, he has to wait for the old man to realize he is just hearing things and let his nerves settle down. When the time is right, the narrator pulled him to the floor and put the bed on top of him until the old man was dead.  However, the narrator having made a crucial mistake in the process before killing the old man who let out a yell that awoke a neighbor. The neighbor had notified the police of the sound. There were three policemen that arrived at his house. The narrator had no fear because he had cut up the body and hide it under the floor, leaving no trace of blood of evidence. He let the police search all over the house. When they found nothing, the narrator invited them to sit and talk. He placed chairs over the board of which the old man was buried under. Talking to the police everything is going well, they were satisfied with what the narrator had told them. After a while, the narrator starts to hear a ringing in his ears that keeps getting worse and worse. He wishes the officers would leave as he starts to feel sick. The ringing gets to the point where he starts to yell and finally when he can’t take it anymore, he explains to the police that the body is under the wood planks and to rip them up. The heart of the old man has caused the ringing in the ears to the point where he has to turn himself in.