The Tell-Tale Heart Summary

The first story in this collection, The Tell-Tale Heart, really sets the stage for much of what is to come. As with all of the other stories, this tale is told through the first-person narrative. It begins with our narrator, already quite agitated, denying that he is mad. He explains that he is not mad, that he simply suffers from a heightening of his senses. He says that he will calmly tell his story.

The first thing he informs his reader of is that at some point, though he loved the old man in question and had no desire for his possessions, he decided that the old man must die. It is the man's eye, he says, a single pale blue eye that made his blood run cold and drove him to form his murderous plan.

The narrator once...