"The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843.

The narrator emphasizes the careful calculation of the murder, attempting the perfect crime, complete with dismembering the body in the bathtub and hiding it under the floorboards.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is often considered a classic of the Gothic fiction genre and is one of Poe's best known short stories.

For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room to shine a sliver of light onto the "evil eye."

A single thin ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the "evil eye," revealing that it is wide open.

The chairs are placed on the very spot where the body is concealed; the police suspect nothing, and the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner.

[4] Its original publication included an epigraph that quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "A Psalm of Life.

The exactness with which the narrator recounts murdering the old man, as if the stealthy way in which they executed the crime were evidence of their sanity, reveals their monomania and paranoia.

[9] The story starts in medias res, opening with a conversation already in progress between the narrator and another person who is not identified in any way.

[15] Their denial of insanity is based on their systematic actions and their precision, as they provide a rational explanation for irrational behavior.

Despite their best efforts at defending their actions, their "over-acuteness of the senses"; which helps them hear the heart beating beneath the floorboards, is evidence that they are truly mad.

"Since such processes of reasoning tend to convict the speaker of madness, it does not seem out of keeping that he is driven to confession", according to scholar Arthur Robinson.

According to the "Encyclopedia of Social Psychology", "Poe's character falsely believes that some police officers can sense his guilt and anxiety over a crime he has committed, a fear that ultimately gets the best of him and causes him to give himself up unnecessarily".

If this condition is believed to be true, what is heard at the end of the story may not be the old man's heart, but deathwatch beetles.

One variety of deathwatch beetle raps its head against surfaces, presumably as part of a mating ritual, while others emit ticking sounds.

[20] Henry David Thoreau observed in an 1838 article that deathwatch beetles make sounds similar to a heartbeat.

[24] The hallucinations do not need to derive from a specific source other than one's head, which is another indication that the narrator is suffering from such a psychological disorder.

In that case, the "vulture-eye" of the old man as a father figure may symbolize parental surveillance or the paternal principles of right and wrong.

In "The Tell-Tale Heart", the old man may thus represent the scientific and rational mind, while the narrator may stand for the imaginative.