Narrator In The Tell Tale Heart

Reading a work of fiction could be seen as a quiet undemanding job, as all the reader has to do is let the narrator tell him the story while he observes. This, in fact, is not the case. A person who has read the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe will have proof that, for instance, some narrators can be very unreliable. In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar A. Poe, the narrator describes the events in a highly confusing way that makes the reader question what is real and what is not. The narrator, nameless and not gendered, appears to be mentally unstable even though the text begins with him questioning “How, then, am I mad?” (Poe, 691) in the first paragraph, leading the reader to believe that he’s actually sane. It becomes clear as the story progresses that the narrator, is unconsciously identifying himself with the old man, which is an idea also

He had previously talked about some kind of an illness by saying “The disease had sharpened my senses…” (Poe, 691), which is a contradicting sentence in itself as a disease is supposed to do the opposite of enhancing one’s abilities. It becomes apparent later on that it’s this “disease” that makes him think irrationally and cause him to act the way he does. His acute sense of hearing has let him hear the old man’s heartbeat, which has become so loud with terror that the narrator says “And now a new anxiety seized me — the sound would be heard by a neighbor!” (Poe, 693). The narrator has actually created this disease in his head to explain to himself the fact that he could hear the heartbeat of the old man, which is actually impossible to feel without physical contact. This way, Poe shows us that the “over-acuteness of senses” that he experiences, becomes an excuse to commit the