The Tell-Tale Heart: A Literary Analysis

One in every 125 people are estimated to be psychopaths with a mental illness of some kind. The narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe is about a killer with a mental illness who ends up growing hatred for an old man’s evil eye. His hate for that evil eye eventually leads him to killing the old man. The narrator from Strawberry Spring by Stephen King is also a killer with a mental illness and terrorizes a college campus. He does this by murdering many college girls without leaving any traces behind. In the short story, he kills three innocent women. Finally, the narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a married woman with a mental illness arguably caused by the husband’s bad treatment of her. An unreliable

People may argue this point because the narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper is also mentally ill. The narrator says, “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick.” (Gilman 6,4). This quote without a doubt exposes that she has a mental illness of some sort and her husband is not happy about it. This may be true, but the narrator from The Tell Tale Heart is worse because his mental illness is so severe, that he loses control and kills an innocent old man. The narrator says in desperation, “If you still think me mad, you will no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Poe 3,3). The narrator is trying to justify his madness of murdering an old man by telling the reader how he took precautions when concealing the body which definitely means that he is a psychopath and has some extreme mental illness. That further demonstrates that the narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart is the most unreliable. The narrator also says, “... but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder…” (Poe 4,4). The narrator thought he was hearing his victim’s heart beat when his victim was drastically dismantled and already dead. This displays that he has hallucinations of sounds and paranoia which are both common symptoms of mental illnesses. This surely exhibits that the narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart is the most unreliable because he is the only one to have major paranoia. The narrator from The Tell-Tale Heart is the most unreliable because he tries justifying his murder and hears sounds that are not