"A Tell-Tale Heart": Character Analysis.

The short story can produce many different types of characters. Usually, these characters are faced with situations that give us an insight into their true character. In the "Tell Tale Heart", a short story written by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator of the story is faced with a fear. He is afraid of the Old Man's Eye. The actions that this narrator performs in order to crush his fear can lead others to believe that …

…the officers were just toying with him, that they knew all along that he had murdered, presents a clear case of paranoid psychosis. Despite the narrator's cunning plan of how to commit the murder and how to dispose of the body, his own sub-conscience becomes his undoing. The sound of the old man's heartbeat continues to taunt the narrator and his reaction to his subconscious thoughts causes him to admit his crime to the police.