Edgar Allan Poe, the author of “The Tell-Tale Heart” was born on 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He is known for his detective and dark stories. Most of Poe’s short stories uses a first person narration. The story, “the Tell-Tale Heart” was published on 1850. Poe uses an unreliable first person narrator, with an unknown name and unclear identity, who constantly tries to convince readers of his sanity. The narrator has an unknown relation to the old man, who he murdered in the story. By depicting how irrational the actions, and how terrifyingly twisted the mind of the narrator is, Edgar Allan Poe shows how the narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” is unreliable. In the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator tries to justify his actions to prove his sanity. He tries to convince the readers that he is mentally stable by saying, “the disease had sharpened my senses -not destroyed - not dulled them” (Poe,
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The idea of murdering a person just because of how the eye aggravates him is horrifying. Being obsessed on getting rid of the eye manifests the mental instability of the narrator. When the narrator says “. . . 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” (Poe, para 3) This shows that even if he claims that his intentions for killing the old man is justified, it contradicts the standard definition of sanity. Subsequently, he also declares that by carefully planning the murder, he calls himself wise. Before the murder, the narrator says “[i]f still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Poe, para 12) He states that if a murder was planned meticulously, then his actions would be valid. Consequently, strengthens the idea that the narrator cannot be fully trusted as a consequence of his irrational
The idea of murdering a person just because of how the eye aggravates him is horrifying. Being obsessed on getting rid of the eye manifests the mental instability of the narrator. When the narrator says “. . . 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” (Poe, para 3) This shows that even if he claims that his intentions for killing the old man is justified, it contradicts the standard definition of sanity. Subsequently, he also declares that by carefully planning the murder, he calls himself wise. Before the murder, the narrator says “[i]f still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Poe, para 12) He states that if a murder was planned meticulously, then his actions would be valid. Consequently, strengthens the idea that the narrator cannot be fully trusted as a consequence of his irrational