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The Eye
Although the old man’s eye is simply an eye discolored by age or illness, to the narrator, the eye symbolizes evil, malevolence, and death. However, it’s not entirely clear why the narrator feels this way about the eye. He likens it to that of a vulture, a carrion bird associated with death. Since the eye’s unusual appearance may be a symptom of the man’s old age, it’s also possible that the narrator finds this outward manifestation of mortality a terrifying reminder of his own mortality. As we know the narrator is hyperconscious of how he appears to others, he may have seen the eye as symbolic of the old man judging him poorly. Some critics have noted that “eye” is aurally indistinguishable from the pronoun “I.” While there may be no true evil eye in the story, there is very much an evil “I,” that is, the first-person narrator. In this sense, the eye is also symbolic of the narrator’s projection of his own malice onto the old man.
The Heartbeat
The titular heartbeat of the story represents the old man’s life and murder. When the narrator first hears the heartbeat, he has just alerted the old man to his presence in the room and believes he hears the old man’s heart thump in terror. This heartbeat signifies the old man’s fear, which stems from his desire to live. Similarly, the narrator knows he has succeeded in killing the old man when the sound of the heartbeat ceases. When the narrator hears the heartbeat at the end, whether he mistakes his own for the old man’s or imagines the sound entirely, the heartbeat serves as a reminder that he took the old man’s life. The narrator does not appear to think that the old man was somehow still living, rather he assigns the heart a life of its own, separate from the old man. The narrator may have killed the old man, but he cannot so easily bury his memory of the murder and the guilt he feels.
The Floorboards
The floorboards represent the façade of normalcy the narrator displays, first to the old man and later to the police. The narrator describes how he replaces the floorboards in a similar manner to how he describes his cleverness at fooling those around him. Just as he states that his kindness to the old man in the week before his death would have killed any suspicion, he describes his replacing of the floorboards as so perfect as to be undetectable to any human eye. The narrator places his seat above these very floorboards when he talks to the police to gloat over how he can fool everyone into believing nothing is wrong. However, just as his pleasant demeanor masks a vicious murderer, the floorboards disguise a human corpse. In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” madness, darkness, and cruelty are often hidden by surprisingly normal exteriors.
