Unreliable Narrator In Annabel Lee By Edgar Allen Poe

In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" we question the sanity of the narrator almost immediately, but we cannot prove either way whether or not he is insane. I have read a lot of Poe's work although not all of it. His mysterious style of writing greatly appeals to me. Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and the hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives. I believe, for the most part, that this is done through his use of setting and his narrative style. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the setting was used to portray a dark and gloomy picture of an old house lit only with lantern light with a possible madman lurking inside. I think this was

Poetic Qualities as Signs of Loss in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem, "Annabel Lee," is a very deep and emotional poem,clearly trying to convey a lot of universal emotion to his reader. During his lifetime, Poe had lost his young wife, his mother, and his stepmother, so in other words, many of the women that Poe had so loved in his life had died, and this was something that had deeply troubled Poe, leading him to an eventual state of depression. In the poem "Annabel Lee," many of these feelings of love and loss that Poe felt towards his wife and other women is all transmitted to the reader.Through the use of various forms of poetic qualities, tone, and imagery, Poe speaks about a universal theme of love and loss, inspired by his own experiences with the women he loved.Throughout the poem Annabel Lee, Poe seems to be utilizing a very dark, menacing,even vengeful sort of tone, and he does this through various means. One of the way he does this is by his word choice. He uses harsh words and phrases like "killing (line 26)," "shut her up,”(line 19) and "dissever my soul" (line 32) to accomplish this. Even though Poe is speaking about his love, he is nevertheless speaking in a very menacing sort of way. The hurt that he feels from her loss has impacted him deeply, he is all consumed by the darkness of her untimely death, as the reader also learns that she was young when she was taken away. This loss has driven the speaker to the point of anger and

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

Edgar Allen Poe's narrators are unreliable such as in the stories, ¨A Tell-Tale Heart¨ and ¨The Black Cat¨ because the narrators are alcoholics and have mental disabilities. A unreliable narrator is someone who can not be trusted to tell a story in the correct way because there is something wrong with them that makes them incapable of telling a story. For example, in the stories listed above the narrators are either always intoxicated or they have mental disabilities which make them illegible to explain a story. They can alter or change the story to fit their perspective and they could forget a part or even be making it up. Since they are unreliable you can not trust what they say. In all of Poe's work the narrators are unreliable and there are many ways to prove it.

“Annabel Lee,” is a poem composed by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s tragic love story begins in a kingdom by the sea. It describes a powerful love that was stopped too soon. The death of a beautiful woman, Annabel Lee, has left her lover mourning her death. Edgar Allan Poe uses archetypes to create a tone of anguish.

This makes the narrator untrustworthy and unreliable. This also helps to illustrate Dark Romanticism’s questioning of mankind. Poe focuses on how unstable the narrator is and how the unconscious mind can destroy a man. The narrator drove himself absolutely crazy over the old man’s mysterious eyeball. He was obsessed with the eye and this caused the narrator to have extreme paranoia. The reader never finds out

If the main character was not mad, it would still be a good story. However, Poe made this narrator unreliable by making him mad. The narrator says, “ I heard all things in heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad?” This shows that he is unreliable, he asks himself how he is mad but, right before he said he heard things in heaven and hell. That is unreliable. Poe also doesn’t name the unreliable narrators in these stories which makes them unreliable. He does name other characters that are more reliable including, the old man and Pluto in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat.” Additionally, Poe uses violence and death to show that the characters were unreliable. In “The Black Cat” the main character cut his cats eye out and then, hangs his cat. In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the main character chokes the old man to death. This is unreliable

Moreover, the narrator is unreliable because he sometimes thinks that he is an omniscient narrator. The narrator states that, “[he] heard a slight groan, and [he] knew it was the groan of mortal terror” (Poe l 166). The quote demonstrates how the narrator somehow knows the old man’s feelings. This makes the narrator unreliable because the narrator, being a first person narrator, has no actual way of knowing what the old man is thinking. The narrator thinks he knows what the old man is thinking at many instances, but he really does not. It is just a matter of the

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).

Poe uses first person narration all throughout this story. He does this by using past tense language as if he was telling you this in person. By using this element of first person narration it is able appeal more to the reader in an emotional way. The reader feels as if the protagonist is

The narrator in the story proves he is unreliable by swooning or passing out throughout the story. In the story the narrator says “The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when I fell; I must have been with within a pace or two of the fragments of serge; in fact, I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awakening, I must have returned upon my steps- thus supposing the circuit nearly double what it actually was” (Poe). This quote is a clear example of how he is unreliable because throughout the story you think the room is 50 yds long, then when the lights get turned on in the room and the narrator realizes that he was wrong. Edgar

The trustworthiness of a narrator can be a tricky can to discern. Two stories that come to mind when talking about unreliable narrators are Edger Allen Poe’s “A Cask of Amontillado” and Neil Gaimon’s “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” Many people believe that narrators from these two stories can be trusted, and taken at face value. Although they leave clues that show otherwise in the form of the amount of time that has passed, the mental state as they tell the story, and the possible motifs of the narrator.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most influential writers of the horror genre in American history. His horror stories have impacted numerous authors and their stories over the years. Various people have tried to copy his way of writing style, but they have failed to achieve the success he did. Even though Poe is no longer living, his impact on American literature can still be felt today.

Edgar Allen Poe was a legend throughout time. He impacted the world on so many levels.He brought about several changes in the literary style of his time period. He was one of the first writers to develop the genre of both detective fiction and horror. Stories like The Black Cat ,The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher as well as poems like the Raven set him apart from other writers of his time.

It is apparent from reading lines such as “the winds came out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee” that Poe feels that he is somehow cursed and that the heavens stole his joy because the angels’ own discontent caused them to delight in destroying the happiness of others. This is further confirmed, and perhaps most overtly so, by the line, “The Angels, half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me”.