The Tell Tale By Edgar Allen Poe (1843)

The Tell Tale Heart Plot Summary

The protagonist in Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell Tale Heart is the narrator who is insistent on making sure the reader is aware that he is not mad (insane) from the beginning of the story. The narrator tells the reader that he is not mad, but rather he is just very nervous and it causes him to get overly focused on small things.  The narrator lives with an old man who he seems to like except for the fact that one of the old man's eyes has a blue/gray film over it and is compared to a vultures eye.  The narrator is convinced that the discolored eye is actually evil, and the only way to rid the evil eye is to kill the old man.  While describing his intent to murder the old man, the narrator says that there is no way he could possibly be crazy because he used such precision and spent time plotting the murder. The narrator spends seven nights peeking through the old man's bedroom door ritualistically waiting for the right time to kill the old man because the narrator says he cant kill the old man while his "evil eye" is shut. On the eighth night, while peeking through the old man's bedroom door, the narrator wakes up the old man causing the old man to yell out in fear. Even after the old man yelled, the narrator stayed in the same place and continued to observe the old man.  Shortly after the old man wakes up, the narrator believes he can hear the old man's heart beating loudly and fears it will alert the neighbors so he rushes to the old man and smothers him with a pillow.  After killing the old man, the narrator chops the body into several pieces and hides the cut up body under the floorboards in the bedroom.  Right after the narrator finishes hiding the body, he hears a knock at the front door and opens it to find that the police were called by a neighbor who heard the old man yell. When the narrator begins talking to the police, he acts very normal and the police do not suspect anything. The narrator shows the police all around the house and even brings them into the bedroom where the old man was murdered which is also the same room that the old man's body is buried under.  While talking to the police in the old man's bedroom, the narrator thinks he hears a beating sound under the floorboards, similar to the heartbeat he though he heard when he killed the old man, and the narrator believes the police can also hear it but are almost making fun of the narrator by not acknowledging it. Shortly after the narrator hears the beating sound, he can not handle the pressure anymore and confesses the murder to the police and demands they pull up the floorboards to reveal the body.