“Tell-tale heart” is a title that captures your attention straight away. Putting an adverb and a noun together is always captivating but in this case, since its two words that don’t commonly appear together, it’s even more interesting. I imagine this story is about a heart that betrays its owner. I think it sounds like some kind of murder mystery with a repeating motif about betrayal and/or heart action whether that is metaphorically something to do with love or literally and something to do with the murderer being unable to control his physical reaction to what he has done!

Poe uses common gothic themes in the text he does thing such as establishes a very dark environment using the effect of the lantern the killer opens being “a simple dim ray”.