Tell Tale Heart Summary

"The Tell-Tale Heart"

By: Edgar Allan Poe

This story starts off with a man telling you of how nervous he was and still is, then he asks you if you think he's crazy. He then tells you a story of an old man that he was staying with and how he was always scared of his eye because it looked like a vulture's eye. He tells you that he then began to plan his murder. Every night for a week he would go to his room at midnight with a lantern and watch him sleep. On the night that he was going to kill him ended up being the night that the old man woke up. He tried to wait until the old man fell back asleep but he couldn't. Seeing the old man's eye made him so angry that he threw that lantern down, screamed, and jumped on him then smothered him with the bed's mat. He then cut the body up and buried him under the floor boards. The next morning the police came because one of the neighbors heard a yell in the middle of the night. He let them in to look around because he though for sure that nobody would find out what he did. He invited them to stay for a while and began talking to them. While he was talking he started hearing a thumping sound. He started pacing and the thumping got louder and louder. He then believed that the cops heard it too, but that they liked watching him freak out. Then he snaps and tells them that he killed the man and cut him up. That's when you find out that it was guilt that was making him hear things and that's why he was telling the story.