Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, to David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, who both died before Edgar was three years old. According to Fruzsina Iszaj, Ph.D. student of the doctoral program in personality and health psychology and Zsolt Demetrovics, clinical psychologist and cultural anthropologist who has a Ph.D. in health psychology, both state that opium use may have played a role in Poe's early death (1617). One of Poe's most famous short stories and a classic of the Gothic fiction generation is "The Tell-Tale Heart" first published in 1843, in the magazine Pioneer (Shmoop). Poe takes readers on a dark story about an unnamed narrator who tells a story who claims to be sane, but kills an old man because of his blue eyes. Edgar Allan Poe accentuates guilt through his obsessive behavior, point of view, vivid visual images, and allegorical entities. Guilt is one of the most morally and logically powerful emotions that cause a person to choose good over evil. As Edgar Allan Poe writes in his story "The Tell-Tale Heart", the narrator begins to perceive a growing discomfort and remorse for having taken the life of an innocent man. Although he is quite satisfied with the creation of an immaculate and gratuitous murder, the crime unconsciously works against him and leads him to feel guilty and eventually admit it. The officers had neither suspected him nor persuaded him to confess; instead, it was he who, out of his own unity, admitted the crime. Growing guilt consumes the narrator, eating away at him from the inside, and his heightened senses blur the lines between real and imagined sound. This guilt is portrayed as an infuriating, cloying sound that couldn't be...... middle of paper ...... or allows the reader to feel, see, and hear how crazy the narrator truly is. The old man's eye symbolizes the “evil” thoughts in the narrator's mind that lead to murder. The heartbeat symbolizes the “guilt” the narrator feels when he confesses his consciousness of guilt. The clock symbolizes the narrator's guilt at the time of the murder. All of these elements are necessary to fully understand the mind of the narrator in his story. Readers appreciate all types of works, including a terrifying thriller. Poe allowed his readers in this tale to visualize and feel what the narrator felt during his plot to kill this old man he loved. Edgar Allan Poe is a great author of American literature who inserted all these literary devices into his work knowing that readers will have entered the mind of the narrator and will enjoy a great piece of history.