Unreliable Narration The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe Essay

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The unnamed narrator of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe almost immediately reveals himself to be unreliable and untrustworthy, in terms of his ability to present events as they actually are. The narrator claims he killed an old man because of the man’s evil eye. But his description of the eye suggests that he believes that the eye almost has disembodied evil, a life of its own beyond that of the old man himself. “He had the eye of a vulture --a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever” (Poe). The narrator becomes fixated on minutiae, upon the eye, rather than upon any logical harm that could be perpetuated by the eye.



The narrator also continually contradicts himself. He claims to have loved the old man and had no desire for money (in fact, he does not steal from the old man). “He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult” (Poe). The murder seems to be motivated by a peculiar desire by the murderer to prove his own cleverness and his own sanity.

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His first words to the reader deny the charge of madness, which suggest that after the murder was discovered, he was found to be insane by a court of law. “…but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them” (Poe). The narrator seems more intent upon proving his sanity than preserving his own life. He claims that his impressions are purely due to his over-active senses; in other words, that he has more insight than the average person, rather than less.



This is belied by his actions, which seem to be clearly irrational, even for someone who wishes to commit a murder. For example, rather than killing the old man outright, the narrator instead visits him for several nights, always withdrawing before he cannot be seen. Again, he seems to harbor the delusion that it is the old man’s eye, not the old man himself that is generating his sense of unease. “And this I did for seven long nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the….....

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Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” 1848. Web. 6 April 2018. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html

Salas, Claudio. “The Case for Excluding the Criminal Confessions of the Mentally Ill.”

Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, 16 (1). Web. 6 April 2018. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol16/iss1/7


 

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