ipl-logo

The Tell Tale Heart Trust Essay

876 Words4 Pages

It is hard to be sure if you can trust a character from a story. Edgar Allan Poe had this in mind when he wrote his stories. One of Poe's works, "The Tell-Tale Heart", can really make someone question their trust for the narrator. Moreover one can argue that the narrator is worthy of their trust, however after taking a closer look at the text, one will think the opposite. The reader cannot trust the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" to accurately portray events in the short story. This is because the narrator in this short story is egoistic, self-centered, and obstinate. The reader cannot trust the narrator in "The Tell-Tale Heart" because he is egoistic. To demonstrate, in the text the narrator says, "[y]ou should have seen how wisely I proceeded" …show more content…

For instance, he says, "[t]hey heard!- they suspected!- they knew!- they were making a mockery of my horror!" (Poe 17). He claims that during the interrogation when he got the ringing in his ear, the police were making fun of him for suffering. This can't be true since they are police officers and they are very serious when it comes to interrogations, since it is their job. From this quote, it seems that he is upset that he is not the one in charge and he wants to believe that he did not do anything wrong and it's the police's fault for "making fun" of him. Another example is that in the text the narrator says, "I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever" (Poe 2). This is the reason behind why the narrator decided to kill the old man. He did it for his own satisfaction, he didn't like how he looked. Despite the many different strategies he could've used to avoid feeling uncomfortable about the eye, he resulted to murder. One can see that this quote is a clear example of how self-centered he is to commit murder because he never wanted to see the eye again, the narrator even says later in the story how the old man did nothing to him, the narrator just didn't like the look of his eye. These are two examples that prove that the reader cannot trust the narrator because the narrator is

Show More
Related
522 Words | 3 Pages

Because the old man is planning to take the old man’s life he has been super nice to him. So, maybe when the narrator goes to kill the old man he won’t suspect anything. The narrator tries to kill the old man every night, but the eye was always closed and it just didn’t seem to be so scary and irritating. The exact reason is , “and this I did for seven long nights every night just at midnight, but I found the eye closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; fro it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.” , said the narrator.

Read More
824 Words | 4 Pages

The Tell Tale Heart is about a man who describes himself saying, “But why do you say that I have lost control of my mind, why do you say I am mad? Can you not see that I have full control of my mind?” (Poe, 64). The narrator is trying to let us know that he isn’t mad, just a little nervous.

Read More
1279 Words | 6 Pages

“The Tell-Tale Heart”’s narrator also lies and makes himself unreliable in paragraph 14 on page 4. He writes, “The cry, I said, was my own, in a dream. The old man, I said, was away.” At this point in the

Read More
919 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine waking in the middle of the night and seeing a pair of eyes glaring at you as you lay in bed. In the story ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allan Poe, the murderer stares at his victim while he is sleeping for seven nights in a row before he commits the murder. The narrator justifies his actions by claiming that the old man's eye was evil. It is also perceived that the narrator has a disease or mental illness. On the day of the murder, the madman went into the old man's room and threw his bed over him.

Read More
479 Words | 2 Pages

Yet, mere moments after he views the eye on the eighth night, he grows furious simply by viewing it, and attacks. Compounding this argument, the narrator is unable to tell right from wrong. The beating of the heart in the final scene of the story could be seen as a manifestation of the narrator’s guilt over his killing. Though it is more likely he fears being caught for his act of violence. Still, the fact he dreads retribution from the police means he might understand that what he did was wrong, but actions being punishable does not decide if they are right or wrong in the mind of any person.

Read More
545 Words | 3 Pages

“I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and this rid myself of the eye forever”(PG 535). He killed the old man because of a vexed mind. ”Here,here! Is the beating of the old man heart”(PG 542). He lost it because he kept hearing the old man heart.

Read More
560 Words | 3 Pages

The man says, “You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing.” Tying in with the arrogant tones as well, the man has a very dark mind and the readers get a glimpse of his thought train through first person. He explains he needs to “take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.” No sane person would kill over a color of an eye, but as he describes the old man’s eye, the audience begins to understand why he takes the life of the old man.

Read More
846 Words | 4 Pages

In case you still don’t think that the murderer only wanted to kill the eye and not the man, this next quote will prove that he does. “There was no reason for what I did. I did not hate the old man; I even loved him. He had never hurt me. I didn't want his money.

Read More
1374 Words | 6 Pages

But like it was brought up before the main character was fine right before, made it easy to lie to the officer’s face. He seemed normal, inviting, and carefree, when really his mind was a jumble, his hands still felt tingly from a recent kill and he had a thrill of taunting the police officers. It goes to show that anyone can fool anyone, looks aren’t always what we perceive them to be and maybe that is another lesson Poe was trying to show

Read More
1218 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
581 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator decided to obviate the old man because he believed it was the right thing to do in order to remove his phobia of the eye. The reader perceives the narrator to be insane when he kills the old man without a second thought: “In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily,

Read More
868 Words | 4 Pages

On the fourth page of the story, a quote states“—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”. The narrator doesn’t actually want to kill the old man but instead has an irrational fear of a fantasy of the Old Man’s “evil” eye and that is what drives him to commit the murder. The readers know this because the quote shows how the narrator has no urges to kill the man when the eye is not seen. Another quote that shows how the Narrator can not distinguish fantasy from reality is “The officers were satisfied.

Read More
760 Words | 4 Pages

As a result, the narrator is insane and should not be prosecuted. To start off , the eye drove the narrator to insanity, which led him to take the life of the old man, The narrator does not know right from wrong. In the story, the narrator said that “For it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye”(Poe). This quote from the passage proves that he is insane because he is deciding to kill someone over his “vulture eye”. A sane person would realize that killing someone over a eye is a silly, wrong thing

Read More
731 Words | 3 Pages

Within the beginning of the story the narrator thinks very highly of himself telling the reader that he was very careful with getting away with murder. “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded with what caution-with what foresight-with what-dissimulation I went to work! “ (Poe 692). That is until he starts explaining his motivation towards why he killed the old man, but as the narrator explains he does not know why he killed the old man that is until he speaks of the old man’s evil eye. “I think it was his eye!-yes, it was this!”

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

The narrator 's sole reason for such murder is purely in his disturbed mind, as he develops an obsession with the old man 's eye and the plot unfolds from here where his insanity augments with the events of the story. Due to Poe’s illustrative language, various evidence can be presented to confirm the state of mind of the narrator, including, his obsession with the old man’s eye, his precision in committing the impeccable crime and finally the sound of the man’s beating heart solely inside his head. Perhaps it all started with the narrator’s obsession with the man’s “vulture eye” since he believes the eye of being evil, proving the insanity he is gravely trying to deny “I think it was

Read More

More about The Tell Tale Heart Trust Essay

Open Document