Literary Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

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that he had good reason to do it. Even though the old man had never wronged the narrator, it was his eye that haunted him. At this point the narrator can already assume what the reader thinks of him by saying, "You fancy me mad? Madmen know nothing" (Poe 14). He then proceeds to explain how intelligent he was in committing his crime. He does this in trying to convince the reader he is sane by saying that madmen do not know anything and then describing how cunningly he carried out his crime (Poe 14). In turn, this should make him sound sane and not mad.
A very disturbing part of the story is how the narrator treats the old man before he kills him. The week before the old man is killed, the narrator is outwardly kind to him "with what dissimulation", meaning that the narrator acts a certain way to hide the true feelings that he has for the old man (Poe 14). The narrator treats him nice for a week so that the old man will suspect that the narrator has no intention of killing ...

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hear the beating of the old man's heart (Poe 20). The beating heart that the narrator hears could be a symbol of regret. In Wing-chi Ki's academic journal, it states that "the significant thing is -- due to the narrator's supreme ego -- not once in the story has he shown any regret or positive regard for human beings" (11). This is true that the narrator does not show any regret, but we can instead understand that he feels regret because of the beating heart and what it symbolizes. The narrator starts to hear the heart before he kills the man, because he already feels regretful about the deed he is about to carry out.
The old man's heartbeat grows louder. It grows so loud that it makes ...

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