How Is The Tell Tale Heart Unreliable

Stories can often lead readers down rabbit holes due to unreliable narrators. When the narrator can not be trusted, it becomes difficult to understand the reality of the situation. In Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell Tale Heart,” the main character is a caretaker and he discusses this disease he has, and some claim he has just gone mad. The old man whom he cares for has an eye condition that sends him into a fit of rage strong enough to want to kill him ridding himself of the eye forever. He stalks the old man for a week then kills him one night. Later the police came to check out a scream heard by a neighbor. Eventually, he gives himself up because his guilt consumes him. The other story is “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

At the very beginning of the story, he begins by saying, “The disease had sharpened my senses-- not destroyed-- not dulled them” (Poe 1). In the opening lines of the story, he comes out and tells the readers that he has some kind of mental illness that has him in an altered state. If he is aware that he has a mental illness he could be leaving out vital details throughout the story. After the deed is done and the caretaker takes the life of the old man, he discusses how the killing occurs saying in an almost proud tone, “First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and legs. I then took up three planks from the floor and placed him under there […] Ha! Ha!” (Poe 3). His sharing the gruesome details about the murder showing no remorse whatsoever even laughing about his “perfect” murder raises a concern. Typically when someone expresses this type of behavior, something is not working well in their brain. Both of these instances allow the noticeable shine through. This guy definitely has something wrong going on inside his head and needs serious help creating the thought of how can he tell the truth or even know what the truth

Jane describes the wallpaper and how it comes to life at night saying, “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, and worst of all moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be” (Perkins Gilman, 9). Some people may agree that Jane is the most untrustworthy narrator because of her hallucinations with the wallpaper, however, that logic is incorrect because the caretaker's hallucinations are more severe making him murder while Jane just is insane. In “The Tell Tale Heart” the caretaker hallucinates a detail about the victim's eye and exclaims, “He had the eye of a vulture-- a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; so by degrees-- very gradually-- I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 1). When seeing this eye, the caretaker hallucinates that the eye is somehow evil. He is convinced that the eye is evil and the only way to relieve this awful feeling is to kill the old man. This hallucination drives him to kill creating the sense that there is something wrong with the killer and he is not to be trusted. When the police eventually came to the house, the killer is filled with confidence but then a few moments pass by and he blurts out, “ [...] the noise arose over all and continually increased.