The Tell-Tale Heart

In the baffling tales of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “A Rose for Emily,” and “My Last Duchess,” the narrators give in-depth descriptions about the characters and their surroundings. The central theme in these tales comes frightfully alive early on in the stories, but still manages to produce a dramatic ending in every tale. In each of these three first-person narratives, the narrator’s motivation to tell the tale influences the credibility of the story, which makes the narrator’s point of view, credibility, and motives, surreal to the reader.

In the heart-pounding tale “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator leaves no time to get to know the two characters but begins the story by planning the death of the old man’s eye. The narrator’s first person point of view is he is not mad with a disease, but that his disease was a gift. The narrator believes his disease is making heaven and hell call out to him, showing he is unstable early on in this tale (Poe 37). The narrator’s first person point of view throughout this tale is extremely unhealthy and strange. Being told from an “I” point of view leaves out some minor and significant details. The narrator never discusses how the relationship evolved between himself and the old man, which is usually something a narratee would like to know. Without knowing specific details about characters in the story, it leaves the narratee to wonder if the narrator is a friend, a roommate, or a caregiver to the old man. What the narratee does know is that the old man’s eye is repulsive and evil, but the narrator claims to love the old man (37). The narrator proclaims that the old man never wronged him, that “he had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Y...

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...d; she liked whate’er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere” (418). He sounds casually at ease when he speaks about killing her. All he had to do is make one command and all smiles stopped, since they were going everywhere (419).

The three tales bluntly reference death, but none of these first person narratives was similar. In each narrative story, the narrator describes the fear and hatred for the person who dies with the right amount of emotion. Each narrator was led on the path to murder by his or her obsessive sanity; even in “A Rose for Emily” where there were multiple narrators, the town seems to be missing their sanity. All narrators were exceedingly participant in these tales, so the stories seem to jump out at the reader with high credibility and motivated narration.