In “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the old man’s eye is compared to a vulture’s eye. The unnamed narrator calls it a “vulture-eye,” describing it as pale blue, cloudy, and disturbing.
The eye becomes the narrator’s obsession. Although the narrator insists that the old man has never caused harm and that there is no motive of greed, the eye is treated as something evil. For seven nights, the narrator secretly watches the sleeping man but cannot act because the eye remains closed. On the eighth night, a narrow beam of light reveals it open, and the murder follows.
Poe published the story in 1843 in The Pioneer. Its first-person narrator repeatedly claims to be sane, while the increasingly intense account suggests paranoia, distorted perception, or mental instability. After hiding the body under the floorboards, the narrator imagines hearing the dead man’s heartbeat and finally confesses.
The comparison is often misremembered as an eagle, owl, or hawk because those birds are also associated with sharp vision. Poe’s exact image is a vulture, and the bird’s association with death reinforces the story’s Gothic atmosphere.