On this page, I will be posting my writing in school. I am so excited to get your feedback on my writings and to hear all of your opinions.

 

The Mysterious Narrator of The “Tell-Tale Heart”

The old man wakes up at the sound of something foreign and mysterious. He twists and turns in bed, fearing robbers. He is truly scared, fearful of the sound and its source, remaining frozen for an entire hour. The scene plays itself out in the short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe where the narrator obsesses about the old man’s “evil eye”. The narrator reveals his true character through a decision and description of what he feels like is a justified murder of the old man. 

The narrator makes the choice of meticuloulsy planning a murder of the old man that impacts the outcome of the story by informing the readers what is going to happen further on in the text, and showing that he has some kind of illness to make him do this. In the text it states,“How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story.” (Poe 1). This indicates that the narrator is trying to defend his position in the situation, denying any association of him being mentally unstable. He keeps on trying to reassure himself and his thoughts as well, making him sound even more insane. Another quote from the text that exemplifies him once again trying to prove himself to not be unstable is, “Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded” (Poe 3).  Because he is mentally unstable he plots out how he will kill the old man, and he is not explaining his actions making him unreliable and he tries to convince readers what he does means he is not unstable because he does not want people to think he has a mental disorder.

The narrator’s choice of committing the murder changes the outcome of the short story because it gives us an idea of the type of character he is, and it shows how a mentally unstable person would react to this situation. It also shows that he is mentally unstable because his reason to murder the old man was because of his eye. An example of him not liking the old man’s eye is,     “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” (Poe 1 ).  He states that the eye makes him very mad and that he will kill him because of this reason. While he was killing the old man, he had been extremely descriptive about his actions, “But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless.” (Poe 11). His mental illness causes him to feel he should kill the old man, and he did so according to plan. He had been very descriptive and wanted to get things done.

The storytellers choice of lying to the cops and then admitting to the murder influenced the outcome of the story because he lied to get away with it. This is because he had experienced paranoia, making his heartbeat pound in his head which caused him to admit to the cops that he committed the crime. The narrator states in the text, “ ‘Villains!’ I shrieked, ‘dissemble no more! I admit the deed!….tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!’ ” (Poe 18). This shows him being very disrespectful towards the old man and him showing that he could care less about what happens next. At the end of the short story, he is paranoid and keeps on hearing the pounding sound of the old man’s heart beat in his head, leading him to then make the decision of confessing to the cops. The narrator learns a lesson that there are consequences to your actions.

The narrator shows us that he is unreliable and that he is mentally unstable. Most of the information he gives us is biased, and is based solely off of his own opinions, so readers can not fully trust him. Throughout the short story, he shows many actions that could be those of someone who is mentally unstable, but in the end, as does the narrator we can also learn from the narrator’s choices that actions have consequences. In conclusion, the narrator learns that his actions have consequences and this decision of killing the old man impacts him life greatly.