Paranoid, guilty, haunted, stressed.
The true meaning of the beating heart beneath the floorboard is two fold. Firstly there was a slight touch of madness, however the majority of it was guilt for the old murder of the old man.But the narrator comes in 8 nights and watches the old man, but on the dead of the hour on the 8th night, the narrator kills the old man. :) :p :Dguilt
The narrator invited him to stay and put the chair over the where he put the body. By doing this Poe has the narrator show an over confidence of not being found out for the murder, but his conscience gets to him and he begins to hear the heart beating. The reader all ready knows that the narrator isn't sane because of his actions every night with the light and looking to see the eye of the old man. The fact he invited the policeman to stay just reinforces the idea he is insane.
Edgar Allen Poe's short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, is written in the first person. It is told by an unnamed narrator who describes a carefully calculated murder he committed, while attempting to convince the reader of his sanity.
They have much in common both being unreliable and mad. But to the differences. In the Cask of the Amontillado the narrator is angry and bent on revenge. In the tell-tale heart the narrator is sincere and acts our of paranoia.
By seeming to be insane, the narrator convinces the reader that the murder could have been made for something as trivial as the landlord's eye; that the narrator could have cut up and hid the body and that he could have actually heard the sound of a dead heart beating under the floorboards. In other words, such strange and incredible occurrences were the result of a deranged mind.
Other than the title, The Telltale Head being a play on The Telltale Heart the similarities lie in The Telltale Heart having the narrator, who is presumably the murderer, being haunted by the sound of the victim's beating heart. Bart, who is also the narrator of The Telltale Head briefly, is haunted by the voice of Jebidiah Springfield.
The narrator decides to murder the old man because of his vulture-like eye and the fear it instills in him. He plans the murder meticulously, ensuring that no trace is left behind.
The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is disturbed by his neighbor's pale, vulture-like eye, which he finds unsettling and believes is evil. This eye ultimately becomes the focus of the narrator's obsession and drives him to commit murder.
One example of onomatopoeia in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the sound of the old man's heart beating loudly, which is described as "thump, thump, thump" as the narrator becomes more and more agitated by the noise.
Based on the narrator's increasing paranoia, irrational behavior, and guilt, it can be predicted that the narrator's conscience will ultimately drive him to confess his crime or suffer a mental breakdown.
The word "mad" or "insane" could be used to describe the narrator at the end of "The Tell-Tale Heart" as his paranoia and guilt over the murder drive him to confess in a frenzied and delusional manner.
The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" exhibits signs of paranoia, obsession, and madness. His mental state deteriorates throughout the story as his guilt over committing murder consumes him, leading to his confession in a fit of manic desperation.
The narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" is unreliable, obsessed, and has a distorted sense of reality. He is consumed by the old man's eye and his guilt manifests in his heightened sensitivity to sound. His unraveling mental state ultimately leads to his confession of the murder.
The narrator's obsessive focus on the old man's eye, the slow buildup of tension as the narrator plans the murder, and the relentless pounding of the old man's heart beneath the floorboards all help create a sense of fear in "The Tell-Tale Heart."
In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator compares the lantern's ray falling on the old man's eye to the sound of a watch that is muffled by cotton. This comparison emphasizes the precision and intensity of the narrator's attention to detail as he carefully watches the old man while planning his murder.
Peter West has written: 'The telltale heart'
Treasury Men in Action - 1950 The Case of the Telltale Heart 4-5 was released on: USA: 24 September 1953