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What two character traits does the narrator demonstrate in "The Tell-Tale Heart"?

Two traits of the narrator are insanity and paranoia. 

That the narrator is insane is very clear.  You can tell he is insane because he thinks that his roommate has an evil eye.  Then he kills him.  People who kill their roommates because they have vulture eyes are not sane. 



I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye … but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.  



The narrator thinks that his roommate has an evil eye and opens the door every night for a week to look at it.  Then he kills him, and then chops him up and hides him under the floorboards.  This would be bad enough, but then the paranoia is his undoing. 


The narrator is also paranoid, or overly afraid, because he thinks that the old man’s heart is still beating after his death.  The narrator lets the police in and leads them to the spot where he hid the old man.  He keeps them there and talks to them, thinking he is being sly.  He hears a heart beating, however, and he is sure they can hear it too. 



Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! 



The narrator’s paranoia gets the better of him, and he confesses.  You can see how the two traits, the insanity and paranoia, work together to create the plot here.  If the narrator wasn’t crazy and paranoid, he wouldn’t have killed his roommate and hidden him under the floorboards and then confessed to the police. 

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