The Tell-Tale Heart

In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the two main symbols are the old man’s “vulture eye” and the narrator’s own beating heart, the sound of which he associates with the ticking of a watch. Both the eye and the...

Debate topics related to "The Tell-Tale Heart" include questioning the sanity of the narrator, the symbolism of the old man's "vulture" eye, the nature of the sound the narrator hears, and the reason...

The title "The Tell-Tale Heart" reflects the narrator's overwhelming guilt. The heart represents the narrator's own conscience, which ultimately betrays him by continuously beating louder and louder...

The narrator's aversion to the old man's eye in "The Tell-Tale Heart" stems from an irrational obsession. He describes the eye as "vulture-like" and "pale blue with a film over it," which incites...

The narrator hesitates to kill the old man in "The Tell-Tale Heart" because he is disturbed by the old man's eye, which he compares to a vulture's eye. Each night, he watches the old man sleep,...

The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" immediately strikes readers as unstable and paranoid. His insistence on his sanity, despite detailing his meticulous plan to murder an old man due to his...

The first obvious problem is that killing people is morally wrong. The arguments the narrator puts forward justifying his decision show just how mentally disturbed and disconnected from reality he...

Since both "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Hitchcock's Psychoare Gothic in nature, there are dark and foreboding objects.  One animal that is depicted in both stories is the large bird;  in...

The key to understanding Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is in what one critic terms "the principle of redundancy and repetition." For, in this repetition--notably even the title repeats "Tell" with the...

The narrator is obviously insane. He does not understand his own motivation. He says he has no reason for wanting to kill this old man, who is probably an uncle. Yet he seems to be looking for an...

The narrator describes the old man's eye as "the eye of a vulture": it is light blue and seems to have a kind of film over it. It seems possible, then, given his age, that the old man has...

The narrator does note that "many a night, just at midnight" he feels an immense and overpowering terror. This suggests that he has some psychological problem that causes him to feel this way. It...

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the "vulture eye" symbolizes the narrator's inner turmoil and guilt. It represents his fear of death, madness, and possibly self-loathing, as the eye's...