The Unreliable Narrator In 'The Tell-Tale Heart'

Improved Essays
The narrator in the story “The Tell Tale Heart” is not a credible resource of information, because he is an unreliable narrator. There is no claim to back up his reasoning to murder the old man. In the first paragraph the narrator explains”the disease had sharpened my senses-- not destroyed--not dulled them”. if someone has a disease, that disease at least comes with a disability, and that disability for the narrator is a mental disease. First reason, why the narrator is not a credible source of information is, because in paragraph one the narrator states “he can hear all things in the heaven and in the Earth [and] many things in hell”. If the narrator can hear things in heaven or hell something is very wrong with him, because if

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Reliability of a Murderer The narrators in both “The Tale-Tell Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are very unreliable. The narrators, in addition to being murderers, lie to both the reader and the other characters in the story. Due to the information about the narrators’ states of mind and ability to lie given in both stories, the readers of the stories should not accept what the narrator describes. Most people who commit murders or other horrific acts have a form of mental disability that makes their actions seem reasonable to themselves. The narrator in “The Tale-Tell Heart” starts the story by trying to convince the audience that he is not crazy, but the abundance of evidence that is presented within the story overwhelms the narrator’s…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    I’m doing my essay on the story Tale Tell Heart. Tale Tell Heart is actually kind of the same to The Chaser, The Lottery, and Lamb to the Slaughter. For one, they all have murder in them. Well except for the Chaser, but if the story kept going on, it would have it in there. In Lamb to the Slaughter, someone gets slaughtered with a lamb leg.…

    • 542 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A trustworthy narrator is a character whose telling of the story is an accurate depiction of the actual events. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator proves to be untrustworthy in his psychological incompetence, emotional instability, and constant paranoia. Firstly, the narrator’s psychological instability makes him an unreliable narrator. This is evident in the narrator’s inability to distinguish reality from fantasy. For example, upon the narrator’s murder of the old man, the narrator believes that he can still hear the old man’s heartbeat.…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Edgar Allan Poe uses the unreliable narrator approach to discuss death in “The Tell-Tale-Heart.” Within the story, we have the perspective of a character, whose account could not be trusted by the audience. The unreliableness is easily seen inside the opening of the very first paragraph. “True!- nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses- not destroyed- not dulled them.…

    • 988 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    But it was his tales that people remember him by. One of his notable works is The Tale Tell Heart, a Narrator who denies accusations that he is mad and begins to tell his story. He tells the readers that he driven to kill the old man he was living with because of his “Evil Eye.” One night the the Narrator sneaks into the old mans bedroom, removes him from his bed while he was asleep and…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is about an unnamed man who is appalled by an old man’s eye and is ultimately led to kill the old man because of it. At the beginning of the story, the man exclaims that he is not a madman and he was very careful when committing this terrible act. For a week, the man cracks the door to the old man's home, sticks his lantern inside so he can see the man, and watches him while he sleeps. On the eighth night, the old man is awakened by the sound of the man outside watching him. At this time, the man knows that it is his time to act so he runs inside, throws the old man on the floor and pulls his bed on top of him so he will be smothered.…

    • 2039 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Secondly, a man who eats others is not a reliable source for a recollection of events. Thus our narrator, Mr. Delapore, turns out to be an unreliable source of narration. Next, in “The Tell-Tale Heart”, our narrator, who Edgar Allan Poe left unnamed, forces the reader to scepticism about the reliability of the narrator. This is because in the first paragraph he says: “True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The narrator discusses the beating of the old man’s heart several times throughout the story; however, the heartbeat seems to have grown louder and faster as the narrator got more nervous and the scene increased with intensity. The narrator talks about the beating of the old man’s heart as he is watching him sleep at night before he commits the crime. The narrator hears the beating of the heart once again as he tries to prevent the police from finding out that he murdered the old man. The repetitive heartbeat increases in speed and becomes louder in the narrator’s ear until he simply cannot take it anymore, leading him to confess his wrongdoing of murdering the old man. “The heart in "The Tell-Tale Heart" serves a dual purpose.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The narrator of the short story, “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, is seen by the reader to be insane. This is assumed throughout the story and even at the very beginning due to the narrators over-use of persuasion towards the reader that he is not mad. The narrator is seen as being crazy or, more and more insane, as the story continues on. Evidence of this madness is shown in many different situations, and also is shown through the narrator’s thoughts during certain parts of the story. The narrator claims later in the story that there are reasons behind the actions that he decides to take.…

    • 979 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In both of Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying short stories, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” a murder is described in the eyes of the perpetrator. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the murderer kills an old man because he believed that the old man’s milky eye was evil, whereas in “The Cask of Amontillado” a murderer kills a man who had previously insulted him. Edgar Allan Poe utilizes the narrator’s disturbing point of view and the cynical tone to entertain the reader with a suspenseful and horrific story. To begin with, Edgar Allan Poe describes the murder in each of the short stories through the unreliable point of view of the perpetrator which gives insight of their twisted perspective enhancing the suspense of the story. When the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” enters the old man’s room to kill him, the narrator describes how, “but even yet I refrained and kept…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An unnamed narrator begins the tale by attempting to prove to his audience that he is not mad but is more enlightened than the average person when he says “I heard many things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell” (39). It is suspicious that the narrator is trying so hard to convince the audience that he’s not mad. Plus, it sounds like the narrator is hearing things which may be the sign of a…

    • 362 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Readers use clues that they deem trustworthy to have a better understanding of the story through the narrator’s twisted lens. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator starts visiting the old man’s chamber at night times, “And every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it,,,when my head was well in the room I undid the lantern cautiously… a single ray fell upon the vulture eye...always closed” (1-2). Every time the narrator goes in the room, he focuses the light on the old man’s vulture eye. The narrator could have easily killed the old man. He didn’t because the vulture eye was always close.…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    4. He is unreliable a narrator because he suffers from hallucinations. The narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" acts as if he had the selective omniscience of a third-person narrator. Approaching the old man's bed on the night of the crime, the narrator claims to know what his victim "had been…

    • 749 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The thing that caught my eye the most in The Tell-Tale Heart is the constant use of repetition of adverbs and adjectives to not only intensify the occurrence but to place and draw the reader deeper in the mad mind of the narrator. The narrator is carefully planning the murder of the old man that he felt had an evil eye, the reality of the eye being evil and being the eye of vulture is not the focus of the story, we follow the narrator's logic and perception. The reader is made aware of the narrator’s unstable mind through the use of repetition throughout the entire story that intensifies his paranoia and nervousness and being scared of the old man's eye to the point of killing him for it even though the man never did anything wrong to him.…

    • 996 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Brad MacFee ENGL-102-75A 12/3/2017 Essay #4 How the Tell-Tale Signs of Schizophrenia Provide a Motive for Killing “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, features a schizophrenic narrator who recounts the sequence of events leading up to the murder of an old man and his eventual confession to the murder. Throughout the story, the narrator exhibits many strange behaviors that suggest that he is quite abnormal. For example, the narrator describes his extreme vendetta against, not the old man, but his “evil eye,” (Edgar Allan Poe). By the end of the story, the narrator has a friendly conversation with the police about the old man until he begins hearing a ringing sound that he says progressively grew in volume. The increasing volume of the sound led him to ultimately lash out in confession to the murder of the old man.…

    • 1851 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays