The story has been interpreted in many different ways throughout the years and is still debated today. The main theme of the story is sanity vs. insanity. In the story the narrator insist that he loves the old man, has no personal animosity toward him, does not want his money, and has been injured by him. The narrator only hates the old mans evil eye. All this is quite normal, but then the narrator watches the man sleep for 8 nights then kills him. That is the insane part. He killed the man because of the way his eye looked. Then he heard the heart beats under the floor boards. The narrator must be crazy if he hears a dead mans heart beat. The narrator seeems sane at first but when the story goes on he becomes more insane. This story makes you wonder about the author. This could be reflecting the way Poe felt at the time. The terror and awe in the story is related to his obsession with time. He associates the central image of the beating of the heart with the beating of a clock; he says the old man listens, just as he has done, to the death watches in the wall. He emphasizes how time slows down and almost stops as he sticks his head into the old man’s room. I considered the significance of the title. I came to the conclusion that every heart tells a tale of passing time, with each beat bringing one closer to inevitable death.
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