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Can you trust that the narrator is accurately describing what’s happening in the story or poem? Why or why not?

User Anoxis
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2 Answers

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16 votes
Yes, because she knows everything that is happening
User Mendrugory
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Answer:

From reading “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, readers learn that the narrator is unreliable and therefore cannot be trusted to tell the story completely accurately. To begin, the narrator cannot be trusted through his vague personality. The narrator claims, “And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night” (Poe 626). The narrator mentions this the morning after the seventh night of stalking. In the wee hours of the morning, the narrator ever so cautiously enters the old man’s bedroom. Here, he shines the light of a lantern upon the “Evil Eye” of the sleeping senior. Throughout the story, three major details of the narrator’s psyche are confirmed. First, we learned of the narrator’s deceitfulness. Every morning he lies to the old man with the least bit of guilt. The next continues to prove the madness as the narrator feels utter joy from the terror of another. Lastly, the narrator fabricates that the old man is simply not home to assure the officers. Readers may question Poe’s choice of a mentally unstable narrator. Though the narrator is clearly proven mad, his descriptions intensify the story greatly. It gives the tale purpose and proposes a captivating plot. A narrator: it is now made debatable if readers will ever have entire trust in another after Edgar Allan Poe’s remarkable.

Explanation: another answer to the question

He is not a reliable narrator because he is insane. Though he repeatedly states that he is sane, the reader suspects otherwise from his bizarre reasoning, behavior, and speech. ‘‘True—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?'' The reader realizes through Poe’s description of the narrator’s extreme nervousness that the protagonist has in fact descended into madness, as anxiety is a common symptom of insanity. He apparently suffers from some form of paranoia. Besides, the narrator claims that he loves the old man and has no motive for the murder other than his growing dislike of a cloudy film over one of the old man’s eyes. At first the intervals receive conventional description—an ‘‘hour,’’ or ‘‘many minutes’’—but eventually such descriptions become meaningless and duration can be presented only in terms of the experience itself. Thus, in the conclusion of the story, the ringing in the madman’s ears is ‘‘distinct,’’ then is discovered to be so ‘‘definite’’, and finally grows to such obsessive proportions that it drives the criminal into an emotional and physical frenzy. Throughout the story, not much objective information is given; the experience is simply way subjective.

User Shahbaz Ahmed
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