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Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!
The narrator makes this pronouncement in the second paragraph of the story as he attempts to explain why he murdered the old man. The ensuing explanation bizarrely attempts to separate his love of the old man from his hatred of the old man’s eye. He even goes so far as to feel wronged by the old man’s eye but not the old man. Nevertheless, in order to rid himself of the eye, the narrator treats the old man’s murder as almost unavoidable collateral damage.
…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.
This quotation appears in the narrator’s description of how he sneaks into the old man’s room every night. He describes how he projects a thin stream of light from a lantern onto the old man’s eye in order to visually separate the old man’s body from the old man’s eye. Only when he catches the eye open does he strike. Although the narrator’s love of the old man appears to temper his hatred enough to delay the murder, his hatred ultimately wins out.
