The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I believe that the conflicts in the story were all inside the narrator's brain i.e. internal conflict. The conflicts were obviously internal because there was no real concrete external conflict between him and the eye. The eye itself was not threatening or intimidating him, it was the narrator himself that had the fear and repulsion from the eye. The conflict with the whole heart beat thing was internal as well because there was not a legitimate heart beating around him, it was the guilt in his mind playing tricks on him.

The relationship between the narrator and the old man is one of seemingly mutual respect. The narrator states "I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. " which told the reader that he had no reason to hate the old man as a person and that the old man had not had conflcts with the man.

The narrator committed the crime because he felt he could no longer with that eye alive and near him. In the quote "When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my 65 Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!" , he shows he has become very obsessed, terrified, and vengeful towards the eye and it shows his decision to "kill' it along with the man he cared for.

The narrator waited eight days to kill the old man because the old man's eye had been closed due to him sleeping whenever the narrator tried to kill him. It was the eye he wanted dead, not the man and it was impossible to get to the eye if it was closed.

I believe that he is hearing the sound of guilt. I don't think that the average human mentality can rationalize killing or accept that their body has killed someone. i think that the narrator's thoughts may have accepted what he'd done by explaining that he was defending himself from the eye, but the relationship part of his brain could not accept it, and therefore tortured him with the imaginary sound of the old man's heart beat until he admitted what he had done.