This story is written by a man that is trying to argue for his sanity. He says that people accuse him of being "mad", or insane, while he believes that this "madness" is truly just a keen sense of hearing. This man tells a story of how he killed his neighbor. He says that he killed his neighbor even though he loved the old man, the only part of the man he disliked was his eye. The old man had the eye of a vulture, and it inexplicably infuriated the narrator. The story goes into how he killed the man in great depth, to the point where it feels repetitive and unnecessary. When the man was killed, he let out a shriek, which someone heard and reported to the police, who then come and the narrator leads them around the entire house, where they find nothing. Eventually, they sit in the room where the body is hidden (under the floorboards) to rest. They stay here for a long time and talk. As they sit, the narrator begins to hear a ringing sound, that gets louder as he waits. Eventually, he can no longer bear the noise, so he rips up the floorboards t reveal the body and be taken away for the crime.
This story is about guilt. The narrator is at first happy and even proud of his deed. However, the guilt, shown by the ringing sound, gets worse and worse. Eventually, the ringing makes him confess so that he can be taken away from it. This shows that the narrator would rather suffer for the evil that he has committed than deal with the terrible guilt for the rest of his life.
What event would lead Edgar Allen Poe to write this? Or did he simply write this for the simple reason of enjoyment?
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