Poe uses elapsed time when he tells us (Page 539:2) how the victim would stalk the old man for hours every night. He also uses this literary device when he tells us that he spent and hour opening the door to the old man’s room just to stalk him (Page 538:2.) He did this to make sure the old man didn't wake up and he could stalk him calmly, when in reality one could open a door quietly in maybe a minute and that been slow. Another case of the use of this element is when he places a chair on top of where the body had been hidden and starts hearing the pounding of the heart (Page 539:3) and he tells us that it felt like years when it was actually a few minutes the time he was sitting there. His supposedly being able to hear the heart proves his insanity because in reality the old man was stone