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“True! – Nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute…Hearken! And observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” These were the words of a madman talking about his sly and cunning murder of an innocent old man in “The Tell Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe. This story is one of Poe’s most famous written pieces; it demonstrates some of his favorite ways of writing, such as madness, grotesqueness, and terror. In Poe’s short story, he writes about madness in many ways. The narrator in this story states that he killed an old man just because of his eye. “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! A pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it 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.” He’s mad! Mad, I say! Just because of a mere eye, this madman decides to take the precious life of another human being!
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