The Tell-tale Heart

                                                                                                        - Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

The narrator is suffering from severe nervousness. He has an acute sense of hearing. He says he can hear everything. But he is not ready to accept that he is mad. He can tell his story calmly.

           

The narrator lives in a house with an old man. The old man is very nice to him. He also likes him. But he hates the old man’s eye. He has a pale blue eye that is like the eye of a vulture. So, the narrator plans to get rid of the eye after killing him.

           

Before he killed the old man, the narrator was very nice to him. Every midnight, he went to the old man’s room. Then, he slowly opened the door and pushed his head inside. He turned on the lamp, but he could not see the vulture eye. When the old man was asleep, the eye would be closed. So, he could not take it out. He repeated this action for 7 consecutive nights. In the mornings, the narrator used to be friendly with the old man so that he would not suspect him.

           

On the eighth night, at midnight, the narrator did the same thing. He opened the door of the old man’s room very slowly and wisely. It was very dark in the room. But the old man heard the narrator’s chuckle and woke up. While turning on the lamp the narrator made a noise and the old man got up. He asked in fear who there was. The narrator did not answer and patiently waited for an hour. But the old man did not go back to sleep. He was very much afraid.

           

When the narrator turned on the lamp, he saw the old man’s eye. When he saw the eye, the narrator became very angry. He also heard the sound of the old man’s heartbeat. It increased his anger. As he heard the sound growing louder and louder, the narrator made the lamp light bright and yelled. The old man also yelled. He threw the old man on to the floor and pulled the heavy bed over him. The old man shrieked only once and died.

           

After he had killed the old man, the narrator dismembered the corpse. He separated different body parts and hid them under a wood plank on the floor.

           

At 4 am, three policemen came. The neighbours had informed them about a shriek they had heard in the house. They wanted to search around the house.

           

The narrator told the policemen that it was his own scream in a bad dream. He also told them that the old man was absent in the house. The policemen searched the house but didn’t find anything wrong. Then they all sat in the old man’s room and started talking to him in a friendly way. The narrator sat on the plank over the old man’s body.

           

Suddenly, the narrator began to hear a low, dull, quick sound. It grew louder and louder. The narrator wished the policemen had gone away. The narrator talked loudly and walked to and fro on the floor. The policemen were still talking to him cheerfully. The narrator guessed that they had already known about the murder. The narrator could not stand the sound anymore. At last, he confessed his crime and told the policemen what he had done and where he had hidden the body.
Watch The Tell-tale Heart.