The Tell-Tale Heart Response

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a man explaining how he murdered this old man with a vulture-like eye that bothered him and how he almost got away with it. As he explains his story, he seems to obsess over the old man’s eye. At the beginning of the story, the narrator’s first sign of obsession is right after he talks about how he loved the old man and didn’t desire his gold. “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually -I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” (Paragraph 2). After describing what he does in the old man’s room, the narrator is seen obsessing over the eye for the second time. “Would a madman have been so wise as this, and then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously - cautiously (for the hinges creaked) - I undid it just as much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights - every night midnight - but I found the eye always closed; and
“So I opened it - you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily -until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open - wide, wide open - and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness -all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could not see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.” (Paragraphs 8 and 9). Then the narrator is at the point in time where he finally kills the old man. “I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye” and “His eye would trouble me no more” (Paragraph