Plot summary
"The Tell-Tale Heart" is told from a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator, who insists on being sane, but is suffering from a disease which causes "over-acuteness of the senses".
The old man with whom the narrator lives has a clouded, pale, blue "vulture-like" eye, which distresses and manipulates the narrator so much that the narrator plots to murder the old man, despite also insisting that the narrator loves the old man. The narrator insists that this careful precision in committing the murder proves that the narrator cannot possibly be insane. For seven nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room in order to shine a sliver of light onto the "evil eye". However, the old man's vulture-eye is always closed, making it impossible to "do the work", thus making the narrator go further into distress.
On the eighth night, the old man awakens after the narrator's hand slips and makes a noise, interrupting the narrator's nightly ritual. The narrator does not draw back and, after some time, decides to open the lantern. A single thin ray of light shines out and lands precisely on the "evil eye", revealing that it is wide open. The narrator hears the old man's heart beating, which only gets louder and louder. This increases the narrator’s anxiety to the point where the narrator decides to strike; jumping out with a loud yell and smothering the old man with his own bed. The narrator then dismembers the body and conceals the pieces under the floorboards, and ensures the concealment of all signs of the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbor to report to the police, who the narrator invites in to look around. The narrator claims that the scream heard was the narrator's own in a nightmare and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in the old man's room. The chairs are placed on the very spot where the body is concealed; the police suspect nothing and the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner.
The narrator begins to feel uncomfortable and notices a ringing in the narrator's ears. As the ringing grows louder, the narrator comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from under the floorboards. The sound increases steadily to the narrator, though the officers seem to pay no attention to it. Terrified by the violent beating of the heart, and convinced that the officers are aware not only of the heartbeat but also of the narrator's guilt, the narrator breaks down and confesses. The narrator tells them to tear up the floorboards to reveal the remains of the old man's body.
Publication history
"The Tell-Tale Heart" was first published in January 1843 in the inaugural issue of The Pioneer: A Literary and Critical Magazine, a short-lived Boston magazine edited by James Russell Lowell and Robert Carter who were listed as the "proprietors" on the front cover. The magazine was published in Boston by Leland and Whiting and in Philadelphia by Drew and Scammell.
Poe was likely paid $10 for the story. Its original publication included an epigraph which quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "A Psalm of Life". The story was slightly revised when republished in August 23, 1845, edition of the Broadway Journal. This edition omitted Longfellow's poem because Poe believed it was plagiarized.
