Tale Tell Heart Unrealiable Narrator

Edgar Allen Poe is one our great American writers as we clearly see in his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Poe’s use of first-person perspective is astounding. History finds that first-person narrators can be unreliable in their storytelling.

Poe’s story is a case of domestic violence that occurs as the result of an irrational fear. The narrator truly thinks that he is sane and that the brutal crime he committed was for a just cause. In the following passage, we see that the narrator is in plain, open denial.

He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this!…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 for ever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have see how wisely I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight -- with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

The narrator knew what his intentions were and planned the murder very carefully. The only motivation for killing the man was his deformed eye. In a courtroom today, this would prove that he is perfectly sane. In the following passage, the narrator is clearly lying to himself:

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? -- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, suck as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I know that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

The sound that he hears is not the old man’s heart beating but it is his own heart. The narrator’s heart is thumping loudly because he is nervous. He clearly is lying to himself here.

At the end of the story, we see the murder is getting to him. When the police show up he sits them in chairs right over the floorboards under which he buried the old man. He hears the heart beating louder and louder but the police do not hear it.