Imagine the sight of an old man's eye, vultures, pale blue, with a film covering it. (Farooq). Could this make us crazy enough to kill a man because of him? This is the event that happens in Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". Every night, at midnight, the narrator ventured into the old man's room without making any noise, to observe the very eye that made his blood run cold. The old man didn't suspect anything. During the day the narrator continued to go about his daily routine, even going so far as to ask the old man every morning if he had slept well the night before. At the eighth midnight of the nightly ritual, the narrator went as usual to the old man's room; however, this night was different. As he slithered like a cat into the room, the old man suddenly sat up in bed, shouting "Who's there?" The narrator stood there silently for more than an hour, as did the old man who did not lie down. Finally he opened the lantern slightly, letting in a single dim ray, only to see that the eye was wide open. "It was wide open, and I was enraged as I looked at it. I saw it with perfect clarity: all dull blue, with a horrible veil over it that chilled the marrow of my bones." (Edger). Then suddenly he heard "a low, dull, quick sound, like that made by a watch wrapped in cotton." (Edger). This prompted the narrator to jump into the room, drag the old man out of bed, and place the heavy bed on top of him. After carefully checking that the man was dead, he proceeded to cut up the body and discreetly bury the pieces under the floorboards. Not long after, due to the screams of a neighbor, the police arrived. The narrator invited the officers in and made them sit... in the center of the paper... he filled the man. Symbolism is an important aspect of the story. The main symbol is the heartbeat. The narrator believed the sound was the old man's heartbeat, but it was actually his own heartbeat, signifying his fear of being caught and his guilty conscience tormenting him for killing the old man. (Aatifmazhar) The blue-tinged eye of the vultures clearly represents evil, the evil that the narrator saw in the eyes and was trying to eliminate. A theme of "The Tell-Tale Heart" is that human nature is a delicate balance of light and dark, or good and bad. In most cases this precarious proportion is maintained; however, when a change occurs, for whatever reason, the dark or twisted side emerges. How and why this dark side emerges varies from person to person. What may push one individual over the edge will only make another raise an eyebrow.