The Unreliable Narrator In Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story about an unreliable narrator that commits a crime but rationalizes it by claiming she is not insane. The narrator does not introduce herself, therefore remains unnamed for the entire short story. We have no identifying characteristics about the narrator, perhaps because she doesn’t want us finding her. She tells us how and why she kills the old man but does not want to be identified. It is possible that the narrator is the old man’s caretaker. She states that she does not hate the old man nor does she want any of his money. What really bothers her is the old man’s dead eye. It is pale blue with a film over it. It can be assumed that the old man is blind from one eye. The narrator is hunted by the eye, it overtakes all of her thoughts. She kills the old man so she won’t have to see the eye anymore. The narrator explains that she is not insane because she was very cautious and aware of the murder. The narrator is unreliable because she is mentally ill. To begin with the narrator is nervous from the start to the end of her confession. She’s “very dreadfully nervous”, paranoid, and delusional. She is

The cause of murdering the old man? His pale filmy blue eye. The old man’s blue eye is the only character trait that is emphasized in the short story. His eye, symbolizes “the eye of a vulture” to the narrator. Vultures are scavengers that wait and pray on dead animals. They are always watching and see everything in their environment. The narrator believes that the eye is always watching her. When analyzed the eye can represent the narrator’s guiltily conscious “whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold”. The narrator has been having trouble dealing with the voices she hears. As a defense mechanism she becomes paranoid of the old man’s eye. She substitutes her fear of being mentally ill and develops