The Tell-Tale Heart
It is not every day that a man goes insane and brutally murders another man. The narrator believes that he is sane, but he is actually mad. He calmly tells the story of murdering the old man he lives with. He carefully explains how he is sickened by the old man’s eye and describes how he sneaks into the man’s room night after night until he finally pulls a bed on top of his body. However, the narrator then becomes paranoid when police officers come to his house. At first the narrator feels justified in killing the old man, but then his conscious gets the best of him. He believes he hears the old man’s heart beating. He freaks out and confesses to murdering the old man. In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator is unreliable because he is too emotional, he is inconsistent, and he has insufficient morals.
The first example of narrator unreliability is when the narrator is too
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emotional due to the fact that he displays disgust towards others, is confused, and is meticulous. One of the most prominent examples of the narrator being unreliable and showing disgust towards others is when he gets so upset and plans to kill the old man because he doesn’t like his repulsive “vulture” eye. Whenever the man looked at the narrator with his pale blue eye with a film covering it, it made his “blood run cold”. Therefore, the narrator decided he must kill the man so he wouldn’t have to ever see that eye again. As the narrator looked at the man’s eye while he was sitting on the bed he became angry. “It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it.” People should not trust other people that have that much disgust towards others. The disgust has taken over all other emotions. The narrator is too emotional when he becomes repulsed and furious about the man’s eye. He is so disgusted by the eye that he can’t see past it to who the man truly was. Another example of the author being unreliable because he’s too emotional is how confused he is. When the idea of killing the man became a reality it haunted the narrator day and night. The narrator loved the man who had never wronged him and still he had the feeling that he wanted to harm him. The narrator started sneaking into the man’s room every night and watched him sleep. “And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, 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.” Due to the fact that the narrator is confused, his feelings for the man go back and forth and his actions don’t always make sense. It takes the narrator a long time to finally kill the man. One should not trust a confused person. The narrator is not thinking straight if he wants to kill a man because of what his eye looks like. The final reason the narrator is unreliable because he is too emotional is due to him being very meticulous. The narrator is very precise and pays attention to details. Every night at exactly midnight for seven days he would open the door to the man’s room and very carefully sneak in. He would enter the room with a dark lantern so that it would not wake up the old man. The narrator revealed, “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.” The fact that the narrator is very meticulous and has very cleverly thought out every detail about what he is going to do once he sneaks into the man’s room is very disturbing. He is extremely careful not to wake the man. Therefore, it takes the narrator an extremely long time to move around in the darkness of the room. In conclusion, the narrator’s unreliability is shown due to the fact that he displays disgust towards others, is confused, and is meticulous to details. The next example of narrator unreliability is when the narrator is inconsistent due to the fact that he deceives others, is a liar, and is erratic. One of the best examples of the narrator being unreliable is his to ability to deceive others. Such as when he was really nice to the old man as he was plotting to kill him. When the narrator decides he is going to kill the man because he can’t stand looking at his disgusting eye any longer he becomes overly nice to the man. He wants to gain the man’s trust so it will be easier to get close to him and murder him. The narrator divulged, “I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.” Due to the fact that the narrator deceives others and tricks the man into thinking he is nice and kind towards him proves he is unreliable. Instead, he uses the man’s trust for him and sneaks into his room and murders him. People that deceive other people are not trustworthy. The narrator gained the man’s trust only to use it against him when he pulled a bed upon him. Another example of narrator unreliability is when the narrator is inconsistent due to the fact he is a liar. After hiding the man’s body under the flooring planks the police arrive at the narrator’s house. The narrator lied to the police multiple times. The narrator explained, “The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country.” Due to the fact that the narrator is a liar you cannot believe anything he says. The fact that the narrator can look police officers in the face and tell them bold face lies proves that he is unreliable. The last example of the narrator being unreliable because he is inconsistent is he is very erratic. The narrator’s actions are unpredictable, especially at the end of the story. When all the sounds in the narrator’s head became too much for him and the ringing in his ears started to get louder he started to panic and become paranoid that the police officers knew he had killed the man. After the police sat down to talk with the narrator he started to lose it. “They heard! – they suspected – they KNEW!” The narrator thought the neighbor heard him kill the man and the police knew that the man was dead. The narrator thought the police were making a mockery out of him while they sat and talked with him. You cannot trust an erratic person. The narrator is unstable and paranoid therefore not thinking straight. He is too unreliable to be believed. In conclusion, these examples show the narrator is unreliable because he is inconsistent due to the fact that he deceives others, is a liar, and is erratic. The last example of narrator unreliability is when the narrator shows insufficient morals due to the fact he betrays someone, murders a man he lives with, and feels justified in doing it. A prime example of his insufficient morals is when the narrator murders the man he lives with because he doesn’t like the way his eye looks. He feels justified in doing this because it is horrific to look at and he doesn’t want to see it any more. One of the best examples of the narrator being unreliable due to his insufficient morals is when he betrays someone. The narrator betrays the man he is living with him, loving him, not wanting anything from him, and then turning around and killing him. When the narrator reaches his boiling point with the old man’s eye, he makes up his mind that he is going to murder him. The narrator explained, “I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me an insult.” Due to the fact that the narrator betrays others, he tricks the man into thinking he loves him back and doesn’t want any of his gold. The narrator uses this against the old man in the end and takes his life. The narrator is an insane murderer because he killed the old man because he didn’t like his eye because it had a film on it and reminded him of a vulture. He snuck into the man’s room and waited to kill him. He couldn’t do it until the man opened his eye and the narrator gazed at it. After he kills the man he hears the man’s heartbeat inside his head. The heartbeat ends up getting to him and he ends up telling the police that he murdered the man and then shows the police where he put the body. One should not trust a person who betrays other people. The narrator is gaining the man’s trust by being overly kind to him only to use it against him. The most striking example of the narrator being unreliable due to his insufficient morals is when the narrator murders the old man. On the eighth night of sneaking into the old man’s room the man finally awakens and the narrator sees the hideous blue eye. This infuriates the narrator and he pulls a bed on top of the man, “The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead.” Once he got the idea to murder the old man in his head, he had to go through with it, all because of an eye that the narrator didn’t like the looks of. Never should anyone trust a murderer and that is exactly what the narrator is. He had a plan and followed through with it. The narrator was so obsessed with killing the old man because of his eye that he thought about it and plotted for over a week. Anyone who can kill someone over the color of their eye is too unreliable to be believed. One of the most astonishing examples of insufficient morals is that the narrator thought he was justified in killing the old man and doesn’t feel any remorse until the police come to his house. Thoughts of murdering the man took over the narrator’s mind. It consumed his thoughts day and night. He went to the man’s room every night. Every night the man was asleep, until the eighth night. After removing the bed and looking at the man’s corpse the narrator saw, “He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.” It didn’t bother the narrator that he had just murdered a man. He was just thinking that he wouldn’t have to look at the old man’s eye ever again. The narrator showed no remorse in killing someone over the color of their eye. In conclusion, the last examples of narrator unreliability are when the narrator shows insufficient morals due to the fact he betrays someone, murders a man he lives with, and feels justified in doing it. He betrayed the old man by being a kind and loving roommate. He then murdered him and felt that it was justified because it was hideous to look at and grossed the narrator out. After reading and analyzing Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator’s unreliability is shown over and over again.
The narrator shows he is too emotional due to the fact that he displays disgust towards others, is confused, and is meticulous to details. He carefully tells the story of killing the old man because of his gruesome eye. The narrator carefully plotted to take the man’s life and describes how he snuck into the room for over a week until he finally did it. The narrator also proved his unreliability by being inconsistent due to the fact that he deceives others, is a liar, and is erratic. When the police come to the narrator’s house he lies to them and then starts to become paranoid. Lastly, the narrator displays unreliability by having insufficient morals due to the fact he betrays someone, murders a man he lives with, and feels justified in doing it. Before the narrator’s conscious gets the best of him, he feels justified in killing the old man. In the end, he confesses to the police and reveals where the body
is.
The “Tell-Tale Heart” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and serves as a testament to Poe’s ability to convey mental disability in an entertaining way. The story revolves around the unnamed narrator and old man, and the narrator’s desire to kill the old man for reasons that seem unexplainable and insane. After taking a more critical approach, it is evident that Poe’s story is a psychological tale of inner turmoil.
In life, many people strive to find a person that is reliable and to separate the people that are unreliable. Unreliable can be defined as an adjective meaning not dependable. Having read through the short stories “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King, it is reasonable to conclude that each of these stories has its own unreliable narrator. The most unreliable narrator, however, is the narrator/killer Springheel Jack from “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King due to the narrator’s cognition problems and the violent nature of the murders.
On the eighth night, just when he is about to enter the room, he accidently makes a little noise and the old man wakes up. The narrator gets furious when he sees the eye. He finally kills him. He then cuts the body into pieces and hide them under the loose boards in the floor. Smart enough, the narrator cuts the body in the bathtub in order to ensure that no blood remained in the floor. When the policemen arrived to talk to him about the scream heard by one of his neighbors, he talks to them nicely and tells them that the old man has gone to the town. The policemen were also unsuspicious about the whole incident. Even after carrying the whole plot so much effectively, he hears the sound of the dead man’s heartbeat and could not help himself but confess about the murder to the policemen. This shows that the mental condition of the narrator was
Firstly, at the end of this story, the narrator’s illusions are the most powerful pieces of evidence for his madness. It is his two illusions that betrays him and imposed him to confess the crime. His first illusion is the beating of the old man’s heart which actually did not exist. Initialy, exactly as he portrayed "My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, it continued and became more distinct", the ringing he heard haunted him ceaselessly. Then he "found that the noise was not within his ear", and thought the fancy in his ear was the beating of old man’s heart. Because of the increasing noise, he thought the officers must hear it, too. However, in fact, everything he heard is absurd and illusive. And it proves that the narrator is really insane. Next, his second illusion is the officers’ "hypocritical smiles" which pushed him to completely be out of control. Losting of his mind, he called the officer "Villains". Apparently, he was confused and falsely thought "they were making a mockery of his horror" which irritated him intensively. Consequently, he told all the truth and "admitted the deed" in order to get rid of the growing noise. Therefore, the above two pieces of evidence both reveal the truth that the narrator is absolutely insane in contrary to what the narrator tried to tell us.
He continuously tells the reader that he is, in fact, sane and has never been more so. The narrators in Poe 's stories are typically not without a flaw that gives the reader a reason to feel pity toward them; they usually have some trait which propels them into being hopeless in situations. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the protagonist has the flaw of insanity, which leads to his downfall. He admits to the murder after he becomes convinced he hears the dead old man 's heart beating. While the narrator claims he is completely sane, it is due on some level to his awareness he is not. While in denial, he shares his feelings about his condition with others and gives himself away. The narrator does this so often it may cause a reader to wonder if he is doing it on purpose or if he is just that insane. The main character 's biggest conflict is with himself. He practically begs the reader to be blind to his actions and only to hear his words which say his mind is in one piece. Had he thought it through or been saner, he would have seen his words and his actions told two completely different stories. For all the narrator 's claims that his condition was helping him rather than hindering him, he failed to see and take action to prevent this from
"The Tell-Tale Heart" consists of a monologue in which the murderer of an old man protests his insanity rather than his guilt: "You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded . . ." (Poe 121). By the narrator insisting so emphatically that he is sane, the reader is assured that he is indeed deranged. E. Arthur Robinson feels that by using this irony the narrator creates a feeling of hysteria, and the turmoil resulting from this hysteria is what places "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the list of the greatest horror stories of all time (94).
Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed. The point of view helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, onomatopoeias, similes, hyperboles, metaphors and irony.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator attempts to assert his sanity while describing a murder he carefully planned and executed. Despite his claims that he is not mad, it is very obvious that his actions are a result of his mental disorder. Hollie Pritchard writes in her article, “it has been suggested that it is not the idea but the form of his madness that is of importance to the story” (144). There is evidence in the text to support that the narrator suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was experiencing the active phase of said disease when the murder happened. The narrator’s actions in “The Tell-Tale Heart” are a result of him succumbing to his paranoid schizophrenia.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” I have confidence in that the narrator is a reliable resource. He described the way he murder an old man because he felt the man had a “vulture eye.” And that the eye was an “evil eye.’ The narrator couldn’t stand seeing the eye anymore. However, the narrator articulates how he is not a psychotic man. As if he was doing someone a favor by killing the old man. The narrator wasn’t concerned what the readers thought about his actions but about his state of mind. Some of his actions lead one to believe he isn’t a reliable source but he was the only one there; well, that is still alive. Although his actions coexisted unethical behavior, the source is reliable due to the fact he didn’t hide anything, he admits to the readers how and why he murder the old man.
In the first lines of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the reader can tell that narrator is crazy, however the narrator claims the he is not crazy and is very much sane, because how could a crazy person come up with such a good plan. “How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observer how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story,” (Poe 74). The reader can see from this quote that narrator is claiming that he is not insane because he can tell anyone what happened without having a mental breakdown or any other problems that people associate with crazy people. This is the begging of the unreliability of the narrator. Here the reader is merely questioning the amount of details. The narrator then goes on to explain how he didn’t hate the old man but he hated his eye.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to hear the thoughts of a crazy killer? Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a crazy caretaker that kills the old man he has to take care of. Poe's story contains literary elements such as sensory language, point of view, and imagery to express the feelings of the narrator and the scenes around him.
The fixation on the old man's vulture-like eye forces the narrator to concoct a plan to eliminate the old man. The narrator confesses the sole reason for killing the old man is his eye: "Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees - very gradually - I made up my mind to rid myself of the eye for ever" (34). The narrator begins his tale of betrayal by trying to convince the reader he is not insane, but the reader quickly surmises the narrator indeed is out of control. The fact that the old man's eye is the only motivation to murder proves the narrator is so mentally unstable that he must search for justification to kill. In his mind, he rationalizes murder with his own unreasonable fear of the eye.
A person who has lost all sanity stalks his prey, an old man. “The Tell Tale Heart” is a short-story by Edgar Allan Poe, about a man who has lost the tethers that chain him, unwillingly to reality. Based on the evidence presented in the 8th Amendment of the Death Penalty the main character should be sentenced to a psychiatric hospital because the narrator shows symptoms of a condition called psychosis. Psychosis is a condition which reveals itself when a person constantly hears voices, has a sense of superiority, and thinks that his or her thoughts/delusions are heard universally. The man has almost all of the symptoms of psychosis, which is a mental disorder
Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is suspenseful, gory and fearful. The narrator tells the reader about the old man's eye. He talks about how much he dreads the mysterious eye. The eye is a curse to the narrator. The narrator of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is guilty of murder because he knew what he was doing, explained what happened in detail, and was not ashamed of what he did.
The next character introduced is the narrator. He is both complex and interesting. He thinks he is not crazy. As he goes out of his way to prove that his is not insane, he does the exact opposite. His relationship with the old man is unknown. However, he does say he loves the old man. “I loved the old man.” (Poe 1).