Tell-Tale Heart: Textual Evidence

The narrator got away with murder in this story.

"'Villains!'" I shrieked, "'dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here!'"

No one heard anything unusual on the night of the murder.

"A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises."

The narrator says he has very sharp hearing.

"Above all was the sense of hearing acute."

The narrator spied on the old man at midnight.

"And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror."

The narrator didn't kill the old man during the first seven nights because his eyes were closed.

"And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye."

The reader knows that the sound of the old man's heart is only in the narrator's head.

"But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a neighbour!"

The old man owned things that people might want to steal.

"For his gold I had no desire."

One of the old man's eyes was very large and pale blue.

"He had the eye of a vulture."

The old man was worried that thieves would try to steal his possessions.

"His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily."

The narrator of this story thinks of himself as sane.

"How, then, am I mad?"

The narrator started to act strangely after the police had searched the house carefully, but before he confessed.

"I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased."

The narrator accidentally woke the old man up on the eighth night of spying.

"I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out -'Who's there?'"

The old man's valuables weren't missing after the murder.

"I showed them (the police officers) his treasures, secure, undisturbed."

The narrator hid the old man's body after he killed him.

"If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body."

The narrator suffocated the old man with his bed.

"In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him."

The sight of the old man's eye made the narrator feel angry.

"It (the eye) was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it."

The narrator thought he heard the old man's heart beat after the murder.

"It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

The narrator experienced sleepless nights filled with fear.

"Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me."

The old man was afraid before he was murdered.

"Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror."

The narrator thought that he heard the sound of the old man's heart, beating loudly, before he murdered him.

"There came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage."

The floor of the house was perfectly clean after the murder.

"There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever."

The narrator murdered the old man because he hated the old man's eye.

"Whenever it (the eye) fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever."

The narrator thinks of himself as a very careful person.

"You should have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to work!"