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

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The narrator was a crazy man, killing someone because of his own fear. The narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe was unreliable because he was crazy. An example of that would be “It was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye” (Poe 84). This means that the old man was a friend of his but he still wanted to kill him all because of his eye. This is significant because it means that his fears control him and are stronger than his friendship. It also means that his inside fears and thoughts are stronger than his heart. Another reason that the narrator was crazy, was when he dismembered and hid the body under the floorboards once he killed him. “First of all, I dismembered the corpse.
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The narrator in a thrilling short story, “The Tell Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allen Poe, is ultimately unreliable. First off, the narrator described how he entered the old man’s home around midnight for eight consecutive nights. He exclaimed,” …I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in!” (Poe 25-26).

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He refers to himself as Death, implying he has all knowledge and power over the old man. The reader becomes filled with dread as the man patiently waits to kill. The imagery portrayed in “The Tell-tale Heart” increases the demented tone that the narrator projects as the main character waits to strangle the old man. Every night, for a week, the murderer would “look in” upon the victim as he slept.

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The Reliability of the Narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells about a young man, the narrator, that killed his landlord or employer without any justified reason. The character explained his decision by a physical defect of the old man. The victim had damaged eye that irritated the narrator: “He had the eye of a vulture…

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Analysis of The Tell-Tale Heart “The Tell-Tale Heart” short story written by Edgar Allan Poe, the narrator which is the murder in the story is trying to convince the audience that he is not insane. He has been ill, but insists that his illness has made his mind, feeling, and senses even stronger. The narrator wants to kill the old man that he lives with only because he finds that his eye is evil and compares his eye to a vulture. “And every morning I went to his room, and with a warm, friendly voice I asked him how he had slept. He could not guess that every night, just at twelve, I looked in at him as he slept.”

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In The Tell Tale Heart, the unreliable narrator lived with the man he use to take care of and loved. He got annoyed by the glass eye he had, he thought the eye could see through him and his thoughts. He planned it for 8 days how he’d kill him, so he knew what he was doing, and watched him at night. The narrator also chopped him up into little pieces and put him under the floorboards, the police came from a neighbor calling the police.

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Edgar Allen Poe creates an atmosphere of fear and dread in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the narrator and the old man. One of the ways Poe creates a dreadful atmosphere is through the psychotic narrator. The narrator is crazy just from the way he talks and the things he says. He talks about how he is not crazy, but explains his actions in a psychotic way: “I heard all things in heaven and in earth. I have heard many things in hell”

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Not anyone can tell of the unknown narrator’s lunacy at first in the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The unknown narrator is mentally unstable because of this made his senses exceptionally sensitive. At the time, he lived with the Old Man, the unknown narrator had so much love for this old man, but it was his eye…his pale and blue eye that drove him to madness. It was every night where the unknown narrator would check on him, but it was the Old Man’s eye that irked him. It was on the eight night, when the Old Man awoke in fear because of the unknown narrator had caused him to have a fright, and at his final moments alive the unknown narrator kills with a mattress and hacks his head and arms off and puts the body pieces underneath the floor

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While Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator of the The Tell-Tale Heart has the reader believe that he was indeed sane, his thoughts and actions throughout the story would prove otherwise. As the short story unfolds, we see the narrator as a man divided between his love for the old man and his obsession with the old man’s eye. The eye repeatedly becomes the narrator’s pretext for his actions, and while his delusional state caused him much aggravation, he also revealed signs of a conscience. In the first paragraph of the short story, The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe establishes an important tone that carries throughout his whole story, which is ironic.

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The Tell-Tale Heart Argumentative Paragraph In the story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart ,” Poe gives ideas which could prove that the narrator is criminally insane. The narrator could be named mad for some of his many actions and thoughts. The facts supporting this include: the defendant killed the old man over his “evil eye”, he brutally murdered the man and dismembered his body, he has to remind himself that he isn’t mad even though he committed murder, and states that he hears the dead man's heartbeat get louder and louder until he confesses murder. To begin with, the defendant kills the old man he lived with over his “evil” eye. He states that it gets to him, and drives him to eventually, after the 8th night, kill him.

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Throughout the story, three major details of the narrator’s psyche are confirmed. First, we learned of the narrator’s deceitfulness. Every morning he lies to the old man with the least bit of guilt. The next continues to prove the madness as the narrator feels utter joy from the terror of another. Lastly, the narrator fabricates that the old man is simply not home to assure the officers.

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The story of the narrator is untrustworthy at times because he is a madman, gives unbelievable statements, and continues to let what others cannot hear affect him. Some of the things the narrator starts off by saying shows he is a madman or a psychopath. It is hard to trust someone like that because they are good manipulators and at falsifying information to others. The narrator reveals, “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe 37).

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