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The Tell-Tale Heart

by Edgar Allan Poe

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Student Question

Compare and contrast the narrator's point of view from the start to the end of "The Tell-Tale Heart".

Quick answer:

In "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrator's point of view subtly shifts from an effort to appear calm and rational to an undeniable display of madness. Initially, the narrator uses fragmentary sentences and insists on his sanity, despite his belief in an old man's 'Evil Eye.' As the story progresses, his sentences become increasingly disjointed and punctuated with exclamation marks. This change in narrative voice intensifies the tension and underscores the narrator's escalating insanity.

Expert Answers

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Interesting question. The point of view in this story is fairly consistent throughout, but Poe changes it subtly to increase the tension of the story being told, and also to underscore the escalating madness of his narrator.

The use of fragmentary sentence clauses is in evidence at the beginning of the story, but less so at the beginning than at the end. Note what the narrator is saying to us—he says that he is "nervous" but challenges the suggestion that he might be "mad." We can see, then, that he is making a concerted effort to seem calm. Phrases like "observe how healthily—how calmly I tell you the whole story" make us parse the dashes as pauses for breath, as the narrator gathers himself and tries to sound rational and reliable.

As the story progresses, however, the evidence for the narrator's madness becomes more and more all-consuming. This is a person who believes in the Evil Eye of an old man and who has murdered him because of it. The changing narrative voice helps us appreciate the sheer extent to which the narrator is unhinged. By the end of the story, he is speaking almost entirely in brief clauses which end with exclamation points. It is as if the narrator is feeling again the terror he felt during the events he describes: the beating of the "hideous heart" of the old man pounds "louder! louder! louder!" upon the narrator's senses. At this juncture, the jagged structure of the narrator's sentences, combined with his repetition and laser focus upon the sound of what is happening, makes us as readers feel almost as panicked as the narrator seems to be. There is no doubt now that this is a madman.

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