Tell Tale Heart Morals

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The “Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe opens with a narrator telling a story where there is a murder of and old man for no good reason by an insane person. The narrator tries to convince the reader that he is not insane, even though he stalks and kills an old man. Who knew an eye would give someone a reason to commit murder? Throughout the story many clocks, time passing, and watches are referenced. The short story is represented with many morals/themes. Throughout the short story sanity, guilt, and love and hate are some of the themes/morals that arise. Within the first few sentences the narrator is trying to convince the audience that he is not insane instead he believes that it is a disease that has sharpened his senses. He states that…show more content…
He loved the old man, who had never wronged him, but the old mans evil eye brought fear to him. That is why he killed him, but the way he killed him shows how much he loved the old man. He took his time; seven long days of watching the man sleep trying very hard to get a glimpse of the evil eye open. On the eight night he waited “until, at length a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the damned spot”(Poe). He moved slower than a watches minute hand very carefully opening the door chuckling at what was to come. Awakening the old man he stood still for a whole hour waiting for the old man to go back to sleep, but for a whole hour the old man did not lie back down. The sight of the old mans open eye made him furious. That is when he “pulled the heavy bed over him,” and waiting until the old man was dead. The whole week before he killed him, he was kinder than every before. It was not the old man the killer disliked it was his eye he says, “He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire”(Poe). The killer wanted to separate the old man from his evil eye so he can spare the man from his own perception that he attributes to the eye. The eye made the killers blood run cold and that is when he decided he would take the old mans
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