SOURCE: "The Lesser Death-Watch and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'," in American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 2, Second Quarter, 1969, pp. 3-9.

In the following essay, Reilly asserts that the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a paranoid schizophrenic who really hears the rapping of the death-watch insect (a species of beetle or louse which makes a noise that is said to presage death), which he mistakes for the beating of the old man's heart.

Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a genuine mystery story, one which thus far has eluded satisfactory solution. The mystery surrounds the source of the sound which drove Poe's deranged narrator to murder an old man and subsequently to reveal both the crime and his own guilt to the police. The narrator himself believes the sound to have been the heart of his victim beating even after his dismembered body had been concealed beneath the floor boards of his...