Tell Tale Heart

"The Tell - Tale Heart" is a very well known short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The narrator of the story is the main character of the story. The narrator in my eyes a man telling the reader he is not insane while describing the way he observed an old man for a week before killing him just because of the way one of his eyes looked. In the story it is never established as to whether the narrator is a man or a woman, but the first image that came to my mind was that of a man. After the man kills the old man and the police come he simply lets them search everywhere because he is very arrogant and thinks he hid the body perfectly. He even lets the police sit right above the buried body! Then he believes he hears the beating of the heart and it drives him insane to the point of him screaming that he killed the old man and ripping up the floorboards to show the police officers.
I think that the narrator was insane but very smart. Not smart enough to know he was insane, but smart enough to make other people believe he was not. He keeps reassuring himself throughout the story that he is not because of one clever thing or the other that he has done. He was just a mad,calculating, smart killer. If anyone goes to such trouble just to kill a man because of the way his eye looks they are insane in one way or another. I believe he killed the man and the police came but the pressure and guilt got to his already messed up head so he thought he heard the old man's heart beating even though he was dead. At that point he just snaps and tells the police officers everything. If he had wanted to the narrator could have gone on living his life because he had been very smart but he was also insane which made him hear the heart and confess to the police