The tell tale heart essay

Overly all these items makes the narrator's story to have a meaning and some sense of direction as well as being captivating to the reader. To begin with, the narrator says, “nervous, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am”. He continues to say, “How then am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story”. He talks of being nervous very nervous he had been, and he is. Later down the lines, he projects that he can calmly tell you the whole story. He says of having no passion for the old man and had the idea of actually killing this man. He then complicates things a little further by stating that he loved him.

It is quite confusing not having the passion for somebody, you want to kill him and yet you love him at the same time. Again, the narrator has no real reason as why he wants to end the old man's life. It is not for his money or neither because the old man had ever insulted him. At some point, the narrator seems to have no reason that stands out for wanting to kill this old man. Then it is like a thought suddenly comes to the narrator's mind. He remembers that the old man has an eye like a vulture and that becomes his reason he stands with to want to kill this old man. His is too vague for a novel that needs to capture the reader's attention.

The narrator tries to show his audience that he is smart and wise and not a madman who knows nothing. He says, “I undid it just so that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven nights every night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed”. When the narrator says he is to kill the old man because of his evil eye at the back of the reader's mind, the reader thinks that he will kill him in whatever manner either by stabbing him or any other way. However, the narrator literary killing the old man means removing the evil eye which is the cause of all troubles for the narrator.

To the reader, it is bizarre and it becomes weird when he walks to the old man's room every time to find the evil eye closed. Just the fact that the old man has not figured what is coming his way is something to call for celebration. He even explains how this made him feel more power upon his hands. The narrator is highly unreliable through his narrative. He says, “And this I did for seven long nights”. He walking to the old man's room for seven days and even an eighth night is quite abnormal. From the following details in the story that I have covered above shows that the narrator is unreliable in most of the chapters and pages of the novel.