Conclusion
So where does this leave us? Does this answer our questions or does it present even more? We got a pretty good understanding of this story from the themes and symbols, but the psychological analysis presented a much more comprehensive view, that went a little deeper, and took a bit of a different approach. Well let's take a look back at our questions from the start:
Is the narrator sane? Was his reasoning justifiable?
Well obviously from our examination of the narrator, anyway you look at it, he seems pretty insane and his reasons are pretty unjustifiable. The only instance where his reasoning could possibly be seen as justified, would be if the old man's eye was actually evil and did pose a threat to his safety, but from our close examination of the story, it would seem the old man's eye had no supernatural power except in the mind of the narrator. So even though we find him to be insane and in the end find his reasoning unjustified, we can now finally understand why it was that he actually committed the crime.
What is the central theme of the story?
Whether you side with the guilty conscience, or the psychological self-destruction through extreme subjectivity, or both, in the end, is completely up to you. The story happening as we have thought of it, might not even be the case. As Robinson notes, Poe left the story's ultimate degree of subjectivity unresolved (377). He goes on to say that "From internal evidence, we assume the speaker to be mad, but whether his words constitute a defense before some criminal tribunal or the complete fantasy of a madman there is no way of ascertaining" (378). Would this change our perspective on the theme and narrator or does it even matter in the end?