Summary Of Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

By way of his description, he has told someone who thinks he is lunatic. He never believes he is mad, but no disease can make people’s sense sharper, the disease just is he provides an explanation or illusion. “There came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”(Poe 3). This sentence repeats twice in the story, later one acts, in cooperation with each other. Both of them mean the narrator heard the sound of the old man’s heart beat. But this phenomenon does not accord with logic, human’s heart beat can not have loudly sound like he heard. “I went down to open it with a light heart, -- for what had I now to fear?”(Poe 4). “I smiled, -- for what had I to fear?”(Poe 4). The repetition just shows he

The heart beat in his brain becomes louder, and he thinks he will die in no time. Unless the narrator, no one can hear the sound, but he obstinately think all of police officers can hear it. This fear even can not be described. It ought to heart shaking. Poe uses 17 exclamatory marks in order to express how frightened the narrator feels. This fear also is showed by 7 “louder”, it is not hard to see, the narrator is broken completely. The title of this story is “The Tell-Tale Heart”, it seem to say the old man’s heart beat tells the secret, but the narrator admits he killed the old man, and tells other where is old man’s body. So who tell the tale, the old man, or the narrator own?
“And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me but his Evil Eye”(Poe 1). This obsessive action----every night he does the same things, but all of these are stopped, because the eye is closing----he thinks he has no reason to kill him. This thought makes others puzzled and shocked. It seems to he thinks the old man and the evil eye are not including in whole body. Either his words, actions or his strange logic, all of these show readers he is