The narrator insists on his sanity while confessing to a murder committed because of an old man's eye. Poe wrote many tales of madness, but this one is his most compressed: the heartbeat beneath the floorboards drives the narrator to confession. The prose is feverish, repetitive, building to its inevitable end. The narrator hears what cannot be heard. Or can it? Poe leaves the question open. The tale has been analyzed endlessly. The heart keeps beating. The guilt cannot be buried. True! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am. But why will you say that I am mad?