“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, a tale of internal conflict and obsession, showcases the soul tortured by a guilty conscience. The story opens with an unnamed narrator describing a deranged man tormented by a guilty conscience over a murderous act. This man, the narrator, suffers from paranoia and the reason for his crime is solely in his disturbed mind. He fixates on the victim's (old man's) eye and his conscience forces him to demonize the 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 culminates in an internal conflict due to his guilty conscience. The narrator is a perverse example of how one's 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 statement from a tortured mind: “I had been and am terribly nervous” (Poe 922). This vivid testimony immediately gives the reader insight into the narrator's state of paranoia. Regardless of “how calmly” the narrator vows he can tell his story, his words foreshadow the crime he commits (Poe 922). He is mentally deranged and committed murder without a rational motive. In "Ego-Evil and 'The Tell-Tale Heart,'" Magdalen Wing-chi Ki states that the narrator's mind is "utterly corrupt to the root" because he is "immune to the notion of right or wrong" (Wing-chi Ki 29 ). This emphasizes the ideology that crime is motiveless and ultimately an irrational act, thus making the narrator acutely aware of the painful consequences of his action... 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. 10th ed. Boston: Longman, 2011. 922-925. Print.Pritcher, Edward W. “The Physiognomic Meaning of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Studies in Short Fiction 16.3 (1979): 232. web. November 1, 2013. .Wing-chi Ki, Maddalena. “Ego-Evil and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” "." Renaissance 61.1 (2008): 25-36. Network. November 1, 2013. .Witherington, Paul. "The accomplice in "The Tell-Tale Heart"." Studies in Short Fiction 22.4 (1985): 471-475. Network. November 1 2013. .