Summary of Edgar Allan Poes The Tell Tale Heart

Summary of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe is a psychological horror story about an unnamed narrator who murders an old man out of an obsession with his pale, "vulture-like" blue eye. After dismembering the body and hiding it beneath the floorboards, the narrator’s mounting guilt manifests as an imagined, deafening heartbeat, driving him to confess.

The story 

An unnamed narrator insists that he is not mad, but rather suffers from nerves that have sharpened his senses, especially his hearing. He begins to recount the events that led to a murder. The narrator claims to have loved an old man he lived with, but became obsessed with the old man's "vulture eye," which was pale blue with a film over it. This "Evil Eye" so terrified and enraged the narrator that he decided to kill the old man to close the eye forever.

The narrator describes his extreme caution and calculation. For seven nights at exactly midnight, he would peek into the old man's room with a covered lantern. However, the old man was always asleep, his eye closed, so the narrator could not bring himself to do the deed, as he did not hate the man, only the eye. On the eighth night, the old man wakes and, paralyzed with fear, sits up in bed listening for an hour while the narrator remains still and lets only a thin sliver of light shine upon the eye. Hearing the muffled beating of the old man's heart, which he fears will alert the neighbors, the narrator rushes the old man, throws him on the floor, and suffocates him with the heavy bed covers.

After ensuring the old man is dead, the narrator disposes of the body with great care. He dismembers the corpse in a tub to catch all the blood, then lifts three planks from the bedroom floor and conceals the body parts beneath, meticulously replacing the boards.

At four o'clock in the morning, police officers arrive, having been alerted by a neighbor who heard a scream. The narrator is calm and invites them in, explaining that the scream was his own during a nightmare and that the old man is away in the country. He shows them through the house and even leads them to sit in the old man's bedroom, placing his own chair over the exact spot where the body is hidden.

The officers are satisfied with his manner and begin to chat. However, the narrator soon hears a faint noise in his ears that grows progressively louder. He realizes it is the sound of the old man's heart beating from beneath the floor. Paralyzed by guilt and a growing terror, the narrator feels his heart must be loud enough for the police officers to hear as well. Convinced that they know the truth and are mocking him, he finally snaps under the perceived pressure of the noise and his own guilt. He confesses to the crime and desperately instructs the officers to tear up the floorboards to find the source of the beating heart.