<P> The story's final scene shows the result of the narrator's feelings of guilt . Like many characters in Gothic fiction, he allows his nerves to dictate his nature . Despite his best efforts at defending himself, his "over acuteness of the senses", which help him hear the heart beating beneath the floorboards, is evidence that he is truly mad . Poe's contemporaries may well have been reminded of the controversy over the insanity defense in the 1840s . </P> <P> The narrator claims to have a disease that causes hypersensitivity . A similar motif is used for Roderick Usher in "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and in "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" (1841). It is unclear, however, if the narrator actually has very acute senses, or if he is merely imagining things . If his condition is believed to be true, what he hears at the end of the story may not be the old man's heart but deathwatch beetles . The narrator first admits to hearing beetles in the wall after startling the old man from his sleep . According to superstition, deathwatch beetles are a sign of impending death . One variety of deathwatch beetle raps its head against surfaces, presumably as part of a mating ritual, while others emit ticking sounds . Henry David Thoreau observed in an 1838 article that deathwatch beetles make sounds similar to a heartbeat . The beating could even be the sound of the narrator's own heart . Alternatively, if the beating is really a product of the narrator's imagination, it is that uncontrolled imagination that leads to his own destruction . </P> <P> The relationship between the old man and the narrator is ambiguous . Their names, occupations, and places of residence are not given, contrasting with the strict attention to detail in the plot . The narrator may be a servant of the old man's or, as is more often assumed, his son . In that case, the "vulture - eye" of the old man as a father figure may symbolize parental surveillance, or the paternal principles of right and wrong . The murder of the eye, then, is a removal of conscience . The eye may also represent secrecy: only when the eye is found open on the final night, penetrating the veil of secrecy, is the murder carried out . </P> <P> Richard Wilbur has suggested that the tale is an allegorical representation of Poe's poem "To Science", which depicts a struggle between imagination and science . In "The Tell - Tale Heart", the old man may thus represent the scientific and rational mind, while the narrator may stand for the imaginative . </P>

What does the eye stand for in the tell tale heart