“The Tell-Tale Heart” is narrated by an unnamed individual about which little is revealed. The only fact that is known for certain is that the narrator lives with, and serves, an elderly man. At first he cannot speak to his motive for murder: “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire.” (1127) Grasping for a motive, he says, “I think it was his eye!” and then, as if to convince himself as much as the audience, he declares, “yes, it was this!” (1127) Searching for a reason for his actions, his uncertainty is apparent and he attempts to justify the brutal murder and dismemberment of the old man, for which there is no apparent logical explanation, by blaming the “Evil Eye.” (1127) …show more content…
(Poe, “The Black Cat”) His pets suffer the same fate: “I not only neglected, but ill-used them.” (Poe, “The Black Cat”) Pluto is the only one to escape the abuse, although eventually he too suffers at the hands of the narrator. His “disease” only gets worse, until one night, he returns home “much intoxicated” and cuts out one of Pluto's eyes. (Poe, “The Black Cat”) The next day he experiences a “sentiment half of horror, half of remorse...but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, an the soul remained untouched.” (Poe, “The Black Cat”) Later, enraged by Pluto's avoidance of him, he wraps a rope around his neck and hangs him from a tree. One night, the narrator wakes up to find that the entire house is ablaze. He, his wife, and their servant barely escape with their lives, however, all of their wealth and possessions are destroyed. The next day, when he visits