The Unreliable Narrator In The Tell-Tale Heart By Edgar Allan Poe

The term “delusional” is defined as having “a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions” (Oxford English Dictionary). In Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, the narrator is an ideal example of this word. In the story, the narrator lives with an old man in which he believes has an evil eye that is torturing him. He decides to kill the old man and hide the body parts under the floorboards of the house. The police come to investigate, and his guilt makes him delusions about the dead man’s heart beating. In The Tell-Tale Heart, Poe uses foreshadowing, diction, and mood to show the significance of an unreliable narrator. Poe’s first use of

The word “had” implies that the narrator believes he does not have a choice. He feels that he has to kill the man because, in his eyes, it is the only reasonable way to solve his problem. The capital letters in “Evil Eye” show that the narrator is so obsessed with the eye that he believes it needs to be capitalized. While the narrator explains how he dismembers the old man, he constantly says words and phrases such as: “You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it. I was careful,. Then I put the boards down again, carefully, so carefully that no human eye could see that they had been moved” (66). The repetition of the word “careful” has a kind of prideful tone and shows that the narrator feels that it is important to inform the listener that he made sure that he carefully disposed of any evidence. This also offers a glimpse into the narrator’s mind by showing that he finds excitement in telling the listener how he performed the murder, which further proves his

The phrase, “my blood became cold,” gives off a haunting, unsettling mood. It also emphasizes the effect the old man’s eye has on the narrator; it torments him. In the last two paragraphs, the word “louder” is said a total of 10 times. The constant repetition of this word builds up tension, which creates a frightening mood. The last paragraphs also start to read more easily and faster, contributing to the frantic mood. This also reveals that the murder of the old man made the narrator’s hallucinations worse. Gargano says it this way: “Poe so manipulates the action that the murder, instead of freeing the narrator, is shown to heighten his agony and intensify his delusions” (179). The narrator’s guilt and paranoia make his already unwell mind deteriorate even more. In short, Poe’s usage of the reader’s mood highlights the narrator’s neurotic tendencies and the shows how his remorse leads to further self-destructiveness. To conclude, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart masterfully portrays the mind of a narrator that the reader cannot