Now, following a brief look at the main points (previous commented draft), a bit of a double-click down into the text and, particularly, the setup of the essay. Note that this is not a complete proof of the text.

“The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them.” So begins the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. The speaker is an unnamed narrator who is the main character. He’s living in a house with an old man that has a glass eye. The glass eye provokes the narrator’s aggravation towards the eye immensely whenever he sees it. “He had the eye of a vulture…Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…” says the narrator (132). When the narrator can’t bear to see it anymore, he resolves to kill the old man. The beginning of the story brings us to the narrator telling us that he isn’t crazy. “Hearken! And observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story…Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work!” (132). The narrator argues that he’s not crazy because . . . Unfortunately, the narrator’s actions counter-act all of the things he says to prove that he wasn’t crazy.

The narrator tells us that madmen aren’t cautious when they’re going to kill someone, but that he is and, because of that, he is not mad. “Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this?” (133) he says after he explains how he went to work. “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, what dissimulation, I went to work!” (132) The happiness in his voice is evident as well as his cautiousness and calmness which, in fact, leads us to think he is indeed unstable.

Motivation. What motivated the narrator to kill the old man? It certainly wasn’t for his wealth. The narrator even stated that he didn’t want it “For his gold I had no desire.” (132). What he’s saying is even though the old man did have gold, he was not after his financial wealth. No, that wasn’t his reason. He wasn’t killing him because he hated him; in fact, the narrator loved the old man. “I loved the old man.” (132) He had said. That wasn’t his reason either. No; his reason to kill the old man was because of his ever-burning hatred for the old man’s eye.

Unfortunately for the old man, the narrator succeeded in ridding himself of the old man’s eye by murdering the old man. With an air of victory over his fear, the narrator was filled with confidence and was perfectly fine when policemen came to check out noises the neighbor had heard (when the old man had shrieked). “I smiled—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome […] My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease.” (137)

You’ll need to develop the whole progression of ease to hysteria, if you’re to address the way his guilt overwhelms him, but first work on (1) fixing the setup of your discussion, culminating in the thesis statement, (2) developing those points that are now treated only in a very cursory fashion (far too briefly, far too high-level) in the second and third paragraphs, and (3) relating the discussion of the eye back to your thesis in some way. The discussion of the eye and of the narrator’s reaction to it is certainly important, since it is what motivates the killing, but you need to place that discussion in the context of your own main point, as expressed in your thesis statement. You might take a look at the model essay again to see how the writer of that essay manages this with her material.

I’m a little worried about you having this ready for Friday unless you can make more progress revising these paragraphs than you were able to in creating them in first draft. Either that, or you turn in an essay that is not very well developed. Maybe you need to talk with your teacher at this point?