The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843

The Tell-Tale Heart" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1843. It is related by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed. The Tell – Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a short story written in the genre ofhorror. It describes the committing of murder and then confessing it due to being tormented by guilty conscious. The paper aims to analyze the story thoroughly including its themes and literary and rhetorical devices. The methodology used for the paper is discourse analysis which essentially reveals socio- psychological characteristics of the protagonist who is an unnamed person, telling a tale about a crime he committed to prove that he is not insane. The paper discusses in detail various aspects of the story which are directly or indirectly connected to the motives and psychological impulsions behind committing the crime by the protagonist. The paper concludes that the story has been written to provide a study of paranoia and mental deterioration. In the first part the narrator is trying to prove his sanity by telling a story from the past. This partconsists of eight nights out of which for seven nights, the narrator peeks into the old man’s bedroom while he sleeps. The second part of the plot is all about killing, cutting and hiding the old man’s dead body. The part three is about the police turning up and the narrator admitting to them about his crime. As a good story, the plot has all fundamental parts; the initial situation, the conflict, the complication, the climax, the suspense, denouement and finally the conclusion, which Poe has blended together adding spices. The initial situation lies in the fact that the narrator is trying to show and prove his sanity through telling a tale. The conflict is obvious when the narrator continuously for a week, goes to the old man’s room every midnight “to do the dirty deed.” He cannot kill the old man while he is sleeping because old man’s “evil eye” is narrator’s problem not the old man himself. The complication part of the plot tells that the old man will not be killed for months if he does not wake up. Murder of the old man is the climax of the story. Much suspense is created by calm and composed attitude of the narrator upon arrival of the police. Later when he guides them in the house and confidently takes them to the murdered old man’s bedroom and hears the sound the suspense is at its peak. The denouement part of the plot starts when the noise which narrator is hearing gets louder to the extent that he is unable to tolerate it. To relieve himself and thinking that the noise will stop, he discloses his crime to the policemen. The plot ends when the source of sound is identified by the narrator as “the beating of hideous heart!”