The Tell Tale Heart Rhetorical Analysis

1. 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. His madness becomes

Poe has a unique writing style that he uses to purposely disturb the reader by capturing the reader's attention, then exposes shocking truths about the speaker. The syntax he uses in order to execute this includes; inverted word order, interjections, and repetition. Inverted word emphasizes certain ideas

This again is a way to portray to the audience the feelings that is going through the character’s mind as the scene is played out. Poe uses the narrating voice of the short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ to question the audience about the sanity of himself. Poe uses rhetorical questions in “TRUE! --nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been an am; but why will you say that I am mad?” and gives reasoning for the narrating voice to prove his sanity. The fact that this is repeated numerous times throughout shows that the narrating voice has fear that he will be found by the audience to be mad. The use of rhetorical questions also involves the readers in the story as it seem that the narrating voice is speaking to them at different times throughout the short story. Poe draws on the fear of the old man in “Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was a groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief --oh no!--...” The modality in “mortal terror” highlights the fear of the unknown person which has entered the old man’s bedroom whilst he

Poe indicates through the occurrence of the events that the narrator has descended into madness. As his guilt constantly haunts him, the narrator is unable to hide it any longer, and confesses everything to the authorities, which ruins his seemingly “perfect crime.” Here, his sanity is in question, as no man of sound mind would openly confess his evil doings to the authorities. The fact that he narrates his crime to prove that he is sane, proves that he is in fact, insane (Holland).

“Writing is the painting of the voice.” said Voltaire. By using descriptive adjectives and dialogue, the author makes the reader feel like he or she is in the story themselves. In the story The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, the author uses descriptive adjectives and dialogue to develop the characters, mood and setting.

Notably readers can see how the story deals with the narrator telling themselves over and over again that they are sane and not suffering from insanity. This ties in with many people questioning if Poe was suffering from insanity by this time in his life. When the narrator, or caregiver, says “TRUE!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” (Poe ), indirectly it seems that the narrator is asking the reader or other character that we don’t know about if they still think that they’re mad and why. The opening line just screams psychotic, not to mention it also establishes his deceptive nature right away. Moreover this doesn’t imply that Poe actual suffered insanity but he did suffer from emotional instability and dependence. An equal important quote that the narrator say is, “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” (Poe ). In spite of thinking that Edgar might have been off his rocker when he wrote this short story in reality he was also going through a time with his wife, Virginia Poe, being deathly ill and then later dieing in 1847. Not to mention Edgar had a difficult time keeping a job due to endless literacy feuding, alcoholism, and his inability to get along with other people. In the same fashion of the narrator being mad is with the last sentence ending with a dramatic close, “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!--tear up the planks! Here, here!--It is the beating of his hideous heart!” (Poe ). Granted by Poe’s later years he started using more and more ‘dark humor’ as previously mentioned in the paragraphs above. As shown in the quote, “And this I did for seven long nights--every night just at midnight--but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work;

First off, Poe uses repetition to show the insanity of the main character. The narrator repeats phrases similar to “why will you say that I am mad?” throughout the story (Poe 1). By constantly saying that he is not mad indicates that the narrator actually is mad. When someone is in constant denial of something, it often means that they are definitely in agreement with it.

(306). These short phrases reveal that the narrator is unable to form complex sentences because he is so overcome by emotion due to his madness. His simplistic exclamations are childlike, like a toddler who can only express himself with limited knowledge of language. This intensifies the reader’s perception of the magnitude of the narrator’s madness, intensifying the narrator’s unreliability as well. 
 The narrator’s insanity makes his narration unreliable, and this unreliability serves a purpose in the perception of Poe’s story—to intensify the dramatic impact.

By repeating words or phrases it draws attention to these words and adds a level of importance to them. In the beginning stanzas, by repeating the narrator’s dialogue it emphasizes his need to console himself and his fear of the possibilities of what could be outside his door. The narrator tells himself “Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door” and repeats it in the next line, hereby assuring himself of his safety. Later in the poem, Poe repeats phrases in order to highlight the narrator’s desperate need to have more information about his lost love, Lenore. The narrator yells at the raven “Tell me truly, I implore-/… tell me - tell me, I implore.”

This is as a result of the author's notable use of syntax "TRUE! —nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" (Poe 1). From the very beginning, the author uses punctuation as a simple way to emphasize the narrator's deranged nature. What also amplifies the irrefutable verity that the narrator is indeed a madman (though he claims otherwise), is the way he finds himself repeating things, almost as if he were trying hard to convince himself that he truly is sane. In addition, the narrator seems amused with the situation, he enjoys acting on impulse—feeding his urge to

Lastly, the narrator states, “…if you think me mad, you will think so no longer…” (Poe, 1). This shows that he is convinced he is mentally sound. The use of repetition in the story weakens the narrator’s claim because a sane person would not need to continuously state his

By using repetitive sentence structure, word repetition and irony, Poe is able to vividly illustrate the madness and the growing theme of fear and paranoia of the narrator. Poe utilizes repetitive sentence structure early on in the story, demonstrating the narrator’s madness. It is used to describe the narrator’s careful planning and precautions against getting caught. The narrator gloats, “You should have

In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe he demonstrates how a person's guilt can make them go insane. The narrator is trying to prove to himself he is not “mad”. Throughout the story he repeats himself in various ways things like “But why will you say that I am mad?” and “If you still think me mad?.” He is telling a tale to prove he is sane, yet his actions contradicts this theory.

Edgar Allan Poe knew how to genuinely terrify his readers, in this case, with characters. One such character is the narrator of the famous story, The Telltale Heart. This man has a way of thinking and talking that readers instinctively KNOW is insane. Depending on his emotions, his thoughts come in long, fluid sentences and short, rapid spurts. His speech also follows the same staccato and rambling trend as his thoughts to yield a disturbing narrative. Along with that, the phrasing and pacing set the mood and enable the reader to live vicariously in the situation. For example, killing someone just because their eye made “my blood run cold” is not the best reasoning, and the paced way in which he went about killing the old man was so methodical; it can only be attributed to insanity. The murderer stalked the old man for an entire week. Every night, he went into the room with painful slowness; taking an hour just to open the door. The murder was even slower. Afterwards, the narrator

The first piece of evidence is when Poe writes, “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. Ha! Would a madman have been so wise as this?” (Poe 3) The main idea of that quote is similar to another that is found in The Tell-Tale Heart. This is the part of the story where the narrator already murdered the old man and has dissembled the body and is hiding it. The narrator tells the audience, “If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.” ( Poe 12) He was silent and cautious to make sure he did not arouse the old man and attempted to not alert the neighbors of his devious deed. He thought wisely, and usually madmen do not think wisely. Insane people do things very recklessly and thoughtlessly when making decisions have been involved. That idea leads this essay into the next