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. The narrator states, “It grew louder ... And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not?” (Poe 4). The narrator fails to realize
