The Tell-Tale Heart Short Summary

The book by Edgar Allan Poe delves into the confession from a man who committed murder. The narrator keeps saying that he is not insane. He then goes on to give the details of how he killed his neighbor. His justification is that the neighbor had an eye that looked evil. Every day, the narrator, went to the old man’s house and looked on as the old man slept.

During his eigh^th night, he peered at the house at late hours of the night. The narrator was amused by the fact that this old man did not have an idea that he was looking at him. However, the old man woke up immediately. This was a sign that maybe he saw the narrator. That made the narrator fearful. After a while, the narrator opened the lantern, and he saw the old man’s eye.

Consequently, the narrator had a feeling that the old man’s beating heart could alert the neighbors. Therefore, he decided to stop him. Shrieks were heard from the old man before the narrator killed and buried his dismembered body parts the floorboards. He hid all the evidence by cleaning the house.

In the morning, three police officers came after they heard of the strange shrieks from the house. The narrator confidently invited them in a while saying the house owner had traveled, and he is the one who shrieked after experiencing a bad dream. As they sat in the house above the buried body, the noise started coming from the floorboard. The narrator tried every trick to divert the police from the origin of the noise, but it kept increasing. Eventually, the loud talk from the narrator could not hide the sound. He told the police to break the floorboard and retrieve the dead body of the old man.