Analysis of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe While creating Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” he uses several different elements to weave us readers into an exciting page-turner. He uses elements of setting, writing tone, point of view, and even characterization to create this chilling story of suspense. As for me, I believe that the main theme of this story is guilt, which is monstrous and consumes almost everything to the point of driving a person to complete madness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay If we break down some of the key parts of the story we can see how these elements interact with each other to piece together our main are consuming guilt. We enter the story with a seemingly mad man who hits the reader with a barrage of questions about being mad (Charters, 1127); he seems to be in a sort of adrenaline rush almost at the peak of readers' interest and pushes us to continue reading. Our narrator continues the story by telling us that the old man's eye is just like a vulture that tries to consume him and must kill him (Charters, 1128); notice how it is not the old man our narrator wishes dead that horrible disturbing eye. Our narrator continued to plot the old man's death for days waiting and waiting until finally he finally managed to kill the old man by suffocating him to death. The narrator's immediate emotion was relief that the vulture-like eye would no longer bother him. I feel that during this later stage of the trial is where the immediate guilt begins to creep in as our author is dismembering the old man's body to hide it to hide his guilt for killing the man (Charters, 1129). The police hearing the screams show up and are initially convinced that the narrator was not guilty of any wrong act; however our narrator is ultimately consumed by guilt feeling the repeated heartbeat getting louder and louder driving him mad enough to finally confess to the entire crime of killing and dismembering the old man (Charters, 1130). Edgar Allan Poe is trying to make it clear in this story that the truth is always known in the end, so it is better to save yourself the madness and guilt; Simply confess when you have done something wrong.