"Louder! louder! louder! louder!" one's heart beats when reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (559). Poe was a man who led an odd life. He suffered from alcoholism. Locals knew him more as a drinker than as an author. He also had an odd romantic life. He married his younger cousin and his younger neighbor. It's no wonder he wrote such chillingly disturbing stories. However, he's not perfect; he is only human. In fact, he uses the emotions of humans in his tales. In "The Tell Tale Heart," Poe uses the emotions of fear and guilt to add to the story's intensity. .
Poe's stories are all alike. His male characters usually have a problem and have some odd mental issue. This is really a way for Poe to add himself to the story. His female characters are all said to be beautiful but yet sick or dead (Szumski 35). Also, his writing has a fixation with death, whether it"d be the physical signs, the wonder and mystery of it, deathbeds, etc. (Szumski 92).
"What is this story about?" you may ask yourself. The story focuses on the Narrator's murder of the Old Man he is living with. The Narrator, however, is really trying to rid of the Old Man's "Evil Eye". Once the Narrator murder's the mean, he conceals the body in the floor of the home. Later that morning, officers come to ask why that there was screaming heard from the house. The Narrator plays dumb, and says that there's nothing to going on. But as he is lying to the officers, he starts to heart a noise in his head. His guilt causes him to hear the sound of a heart beating. This drives the man to eventually saying " "Villains," I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the dead! - tear up the planks! - here, here! - It's the beating of his hideous heart!" " (559).
The story essentially has three central characters, The Narrator, the Old man, and the "Evil Eye", and two of these characters being victims. The Old Man is the initial victim of the Narrator's irritation with the "Evil Eye".
