Inescapable Truth: An Analysis of "The Tell-Tale Heart" Although during the first few lines of his story, Poe suggests that his nameless narrator is mad, a reader cannot fully assert this assumption until the madman explains his feelings toward the old man. Poe's first line even deviates the reader from a strong conclusion of insanity: "True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" (Poe 36). …
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showed last 75 words of 899 total
…By Lantern Light: An Explication of Passage in Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." An Introduction to Fiction. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2002. 765-768. Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." An Introduction to Fiction. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2002. 35-39. "The Hearer of the Tell-Tale Heart." An Introduction to Fiction. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 8th ed. New York: Longman, 2002. 770-773.