'The Tell-Tale Heart' af Edgar A. Poe, analyse

The tell-tale heart is a short story written by Edgar A. Poe. The genre of the story is evil, which also is the topic we are working with in class these days. There are many definitions of evil. In this case we are dealing with a man convinced that his actions isn’t bad. Throughout the story the narrator tries to convince the readers that his actions isn’t evil, but there is a meaning behind them. That he do, to make us (the readers) sure of his innocence, because he deep down don’t know it himself.

You don’t get to know if the two persons know each other, but they are in some way related (I loved the old man). You get the feeling that they live in the same house. And every evening the narrator sneaks into the old mans room and waits for the moment the old mans “evil eye” will be shown. One night the old man wakes up and the narrator sees his chance to strike. He lifts the bed and chokes him in it. Then cuts him into peaces and hide the corpse beneath some old wooden boards. Later when he has cleaned up, the police shows up. He starts by acting cool, but the longer the police stays the more nervous he gets. In the end he hear a constant sound that he thinks is the deal old man. He ends up surrender himself because of the sound, which really is his own heartbeat. So you can say that his own heart pounding reveals him at the end.