Friday, September 25, 2015

"The Tell-Tale Heart" is told from whose point of view?

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, a young man who murders an old man who lives with him. The relationship between the two is unclear—perhaps one is a lodger and one is a landlord. The narrator spends much of the story attempting to convince the reader—and perhaps himself—that he is not a madman (he attests that “what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense”), though with every development in his story it becomes clear that to some extent he does indeed merit that title. The murderer states that he holds no animosity toward the old man, but that he rather could not stand the sight of the old man’s “vulture eye”: “a pale blue eye with a film over it.” The night of the murder, the narrator, speaking of this eye, states, “I grew furious as I gazed upon it.” He has been overcome with an obsession, fueled by the very madness he denies, and after the murder is haunted by the beating of the dead man’s heart.

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