The Tell-Tale Heart

Analysis on The Tell-Tale Heart Edgar Allan Poe’s short horror story “The Tell-Tale Heart” describes a young man with psychological problems killed an old man with a “pale blue eye”. At last, due to pressure and guilt, the young man had Psychorrhexis by hearing the old man’s heart beats.
Poe sets the story in a gloomy bedroom of an old house and the murder happens in the midnight. The setting foreshadows something bad may happens. In addition, the plot exceeds the reader’s expectation on the story since the narrator murdered the old man and he confessed the crime at last. Poe uses an unreliable narrator who claims he is extremely nervous but not insane. However, the words he says cannot be trusted in certain extent. The fatal flaw of narrator’s
motivations is the unknown hate against the old man only because of his eye.
The theme of this short story mainly discuss about the complex feeling of love and hate. The quote “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me” (Poe 1) illustrates that the narrator likes the old man but he murdered him violently at last. It shows several emotions can exist collectively and human beings need to control them in a reasonable way.