He loved the old man who never harmed him. He confesses that there was no motive for what he did. Then he tells the listener to listen carefully as he narrates the story. He tells the imaginary listener that he is more vigilant now and is able to hear everything. Furthermore, he announces that the illness has given him more strength especially to his “sense of hearing”. He confesses that he has been ill but denies the fact that he is insane. The Tell Tale Heart SummaryĪt the start of the story, the narrator is answering an imaginary listener. The story also explores the paranoiac state of mind of the narrator. The unreliable narrator in the story brutally murders the old man irrationally and without any reason. The story is a proof of human being’s inherently evil nature. The setting and diction used in the story make it a classic Poe story. The story is one of the classics of Poe’s short stories and of its genre. Poe only focuses on the events and situations which lead to the killing rather than focusing on individuals. We do not know, as readers, whether the narrator is a male or a female.

Furthermore, Poe has not given us detail about the narrator’s relationship with the old man. The untrustworthy narrator does not have a solid reason to murder the old man (apart from his hatred for the old man’s eye). Eventually, he cannot bear the secret anymore and confesses his crime to the policemen. His guilty conscience constantly pricks him and reminds him of his brutal act. He also receives the policemen with utmost comfort but, slowly and gradually, his anxiety increases. He attends to every minute detail in the process of murder carefully kills him, disjoints every part of his body, and then buries the body parts underground in the room. The old man’s “vulture-eye” makes the narrator angry and he decides to kill him. He holds no grudges against him and murders him without any motive. He denies that he suffers from some mental illness and openly boasts of his cleverness and cunning behavior. It is about a murderer who tries to persuade his readers of his mental stability while telling the tale of the brutish act. “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story by Edgar Allan Poe written in 1843.

The tell tale heart synopsis