If a casual reader just read Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," he would
             only understand a part of what makes Poe such a master writer. Some
             writers can only manage one genre well, but Poe managed to write poetry,
             prose, and fiction, and each a little differently. Reading only one piece
             by Poe is like eating your toast without butter. The toast will taste all
             right, but it will taste even better if you enhance it with a little
             something extra. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the story of a madman, for who
             else would murder an old man simply because he has a hideous eye' Yet,
             there is more to the narrator of this piece, just as there is more to Poe
             than horror. As one Poe critic maintains, "The complete unity of the story
             disarms the critical faculties until the imagination of the madman seems
             for the moment reality. It is an almost perfect illustration of Poe's own
             theory of the short story, for every word contributes to the central
             effect" (Quinn 394). From the first sentence in the short story, the
             narrator admits he is nervous, and the reader gets a mental picture of a
             madman who should probably be locked up. However, the man is not so mad
             that he cannot intricately plan the murder of the old man, and he is a man
             with patience and stealth, which indicates he may be able to function at
             least at some level of normalcy in society. Certainly, the old man does
             not suspect him, or he would have left the house. In fact, many critics
             believe that the killing of the old man is really the narrator's way of
             killing his own sense of himself, as this critic notes, "So in killing the
             old man the narrator is attempting to kill his sense of himself as other
             than himself" (Williams 38). Thus, Poe weaves some very complex notions
             into this short story, and goes far beyond terrifying his audience, he
             makes them dig deeper into the mind of a madman, and attempts to show what
             motivates the mad, as well as the sane. No onl...