"The Tell-Tale Heart" is one of a number of Poe stories that focuse on an obsessed protagonist/narrator. Indeed, what holds the story together and holds the attention of the reader is the single-minded voice of the madman who, even as he denies his madness, tells a story that confirms it. Poe's use of a first-person narrator obsessively recounting a past event is an important element in his contribution to the short story form as a highly unified aesthetic entity.

Poe's theory that every element in a short prose story should contribute to its overall effect is exemplified by the fact that the protagonist/narrator is obsessively concerned with his irrational desire to kill the old man because of the old man's eye and by his rational method of proceeding. Poe's stories are often characterized by a psychological mania held in check by the rational control of the...