The Point of View of The Tell-tale Heart

Tale Heart Poe writes “The Tell Tale Heart” from the perspective of the murderer of the old man. When an author creates a situation where the central character tells his own account, the overall impact of the story is heightened. The narrator, in this story, adds to the overall effect of horror by continually stressing to the reader that he or she is not mad, and tries to convince us of that fact by how carefully this brutal crime was planned and executed.

The point of view of the narrator helps communicate that the theme is madness to the audience because from the beginning the narrator uses repetition, metaphors and irony. "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. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heavens and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" (Literature 37) "...Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me.”

As you can see the narrator is clearly mad, because this story is told in the first person it helps you understand the character even better, because we are seeing what exactly is happening to him moment by moment. It helps us understand what is going on in his head because we are getting to know him throughout the story.

The repetition in this story is phenomenal. He uses it constantly, adding to the madness of this man. “And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep.” (Literature 37) He is insane and losing it every moment of the story, repeating words and using disturbing metaphors and similes. He compares many things such as referring to the eye of the old man as the “evil eye”, and “eye of a vulture”. All the while doing this, the narrator believes that he is normal and is not insane.

The purpose of the figurative language used in this story is to coincide with helping the 1st person point of view. “Ha! Would a madman have been so wise as this,”.(Literature 37) “It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed”.

This story is basically a big exaggeration of madness, showing the actions and feelings of the narrator. The narrator helps us by using all these big exaggerations to understand how he has lost his mind and is going to commit murder. The narrator repeatedly insists that he is not mad; however the reader soon realizes that the fear of the vulture eye has consumed the narrator, who by this point in the story has become a victim to the madness which he had hoped to elude. Without all the figurative language it would be hard to see that the theme of this story, being madness, is all possible due to the point of view being in first person.

We see that the character never changed, but by the end of the story the narrator finally realizes that what he was trying to convince himself of was completely false. For his madness he revealed in the beginning only gets the best of him in the end.

Works Cited

1. Kennedy, X.J., and Dana Gioia. An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Pearson, 2016, 2013, and 2010