Just because they present their reality, does not mean the reader has to accept it as truth.

The theme of this work is that not all narrators are reliable. However, it is clear that he is disturbed. The narrator states resolutely that he is not insane. In the following lines: “TRUE! -nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am but why will you say that I am mad?” “Object there was none. He is betrayed by his state of mind when the police come and pleads guilty to his murder. The old man’s light blue eye disturbs the author so much, and admits that he must kill him until one night when he awakens the old man, and murders him. The narrator attempts to use rhetoric to make the reader believe that he is not insane. The author of the The Tell-Tale Heart has just committed a murder. “I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” Nervous, mad, disease, destroyed, Hell, “my blood ran cold”, “to take the life”, “rid myself. Edgar Allan Poe The Tell Tale Heartĭelusional: The narrator states that he is completely rational, but his obsessive, manic, and homicidal behavior says otherwise. 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. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture - a pale blue eye, with a film over it. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them.

The tell tale heart annotated