Thursday, April 16, 2015

What are sanity and insanity indicators relating to the narrator in the story ''The Tell-Tale Heart''?

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," a narrator tells the story of an old man he is caring for, whom he eventually kills. From the start, he addresses the reader (by using second person-you) saying that the reader may find him to be very nervous. By the end of the story, his guilt over the murder has caught up with him and he confesses to the crime. There are many examples in the story...

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," a narrator tells the story of an old man he is caring for, whom he eventually kills. From the start, he addresses the reader (by using second person-you) saying that the reader may find him to be very nervous. By the end of the story, his guilt over the murder has caught up with him and he confesses to the crime. There are many examples in the story that support a reading of the narrator being sane and also insane.


The points that show the narrator as sane include his explanation of the time and days, as well as the steps he took to commit the crime. He seems logical in this explanation, even though his motivation may be problematic. The examples that point to his insanity are his insistence on killing the old man while the eye is open and the heartbeat he claims to hear throughout the story. Because we know that there is no way he can hear a dead man's heartbeat, this is perhaps the strongest example that points to the narrator's insanity.

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