The Tell-Tale Heart: Analysis Poe is best known as the author of horror and suspense. The dark- gothic element that surrounds his stories is enhanced even more with the appearance of multi-complex personalities which ‘move between the edge’ of normal and abnormal. One of his characters that represent this notion is the narrator and main character of his well-known story the “Tell-Tale Heart”. His psychological complexity and his narrative technique immediately captivates the audience attention who ‘struggles’ to come to some conclusion about the narrator’s state of mind. The narrator’s psychological instability is visible through the tone, the syntax and the constant alleviation between sanity and insanity. The beginning of the “Tell-Tale Heart” immediately sets the ambiguous mood of the story. The first line captivates almost instantaneously the reader’s attention due to the irregular pattern of the sentence. “TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Oates & Ed, 1992). The narration starts with the word ‘TRUE’ fully capitalized and after that there is an odd exclamation mark. The narrator immediately seeks the attention of his …show more content…
“Presently I heard a…although I chuckled at heart” (Oates & Ed, 1992). By declaring that he is able to understand what is inside the head of another human being the protagonist loses once again his credibility. Besides the fact that the narrator seems to sympathize with the old man he is once more unable to conceive that the eye is a part of the old man’s identity. “The narrator is also helpless about his anxieties and his temperament”(Abu, Madi, & Neimneh, 2013). The narrator seems to lose his temper both by the appearance of the eye “It was open…I grew furious as I gaze upon it” and the sound of the heartbeat “ It increased my fury,…into courage” (Oates & Ed,