“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, a short story about internal conflicts and obsession, highlights the soul tortured by a guilty conscience. The story opens with an anonymous narrator describing a disturbed man with a guilty conscience for a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia and the reason for his crime lies solely in his disturbed mind. He becomes obsessed with the eye of the victim (the old man) and his conscience forces him to demonize that eye. Finally, the reader is taken on a journey through the planning and execution of a murder at the hands of the narrator. Ultimately, the narrator's obsession causes an unjust death that results in an internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The narrator is a perverse example of how the guilty conscience ultimately causes a destructive, self-fulfilling prophecy. Poe recounts the narrator's guilt by describing the obsessions of the tortured mind, eyes, and heart. The tale begins with a dramatic declaration from a tortured mind: “I was very nervous and I am” (Poe 922). This striking testimony immediately gives the reader insight into the narrator's state of paranoia. Regardless of how “calmly” the narrator swears he can tell his story, his words foreshadow the crime he commits (Poe 922). He is mentally unbalanced and committed murder without rational motive. In "Ego-Evil and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'", Magdalen Wing-chi Ki says that the narrator's mind is "totally corrupt at its roots" because he is "immune to the notion of good or evil » (Wing-chi Ki 29). This underlines the ideology that crime is motiveless and ultimately an irrational act, thus making the narrator acutely aware of the distressing consequences of his act...... middle of paper ......dy . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” George McMichael et al. Anthology of American Literature. Ed. 10th. Boston: Longman, 2011. 922-925. Print.Pritcher, Edward W. “The Physiognomic Significance of Poe’s ‘Revealing Heart’.” Studies in Short Fiction 16.3 (1979): 232. web. November 1, 2013. .Wing-chi Ki, Madeleine. “Ego-Evil and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Renaissance 61.1 (2008): 25-36. Internet. November 1, 2013. .Witherington, Paul. “The accomplice in “The Tell-Tale Heart”.” Studies in Short Fiction 22.4 (1985): 471-475. Internet. November 1 2013. .