The Tell-Tale Heart
Written By: Edgar Allan Poe
Summary
"True!- nervous- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"
"The Tell- Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe, is a story that talks about a man with a fear of an old man's eye, also known as the "Evil Eye". There was no reason, no object, no passion for the fear. Every night the man watched over the old man's sleep at midnight. He did this continuously for seven nights; precisely on midnight. With the old man sleeping he couldn't do the work because it wasn't the old man that he had a phobia of, but the Evil Eye. On the eighth night, the old man woke from his sleep. Alerted, he kept awake and the fear overpowered him. The old man's heart began beating rapidly, getting more closer to his death.
"It was not a groan of pain or grief- oh no!- it was the low, stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe."
At the sound of that groan, the man left his hiding place and suffocated the poor old man with the weight of the mattress. In an instant the old man left the world, and to cover what he had done, the man decided to hide the mans body. Where? Underneath the planks from the flooring of the chamber, laid the old mans body.
Three officers arrived, saying they had heard a shriek. Without the eye, the man had nothing to fear, so he welcomed the officers and let them investigate. But as soon as they sat above the old mans body, guilt overpowered the man.
"Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!"
Not bieng able to hold the guilt any longer, the man confessed everything to the officer.