I am doing a report on the Short Story..."The Tell-Tale Heart". Does anyone know where I can find critiques/opinions on the realtionship, sex and sanity of narrator in this short story. I have already gone to poedecoder.com and poecentral.com. This has helped but I need more. Thank you.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

Answers

Well, My class just finished that story Christina, and I don't know if this will help but i would just type in his name in a search box and go for it....sorry if i'm not much help...

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2002

One assumes it is a young man with acute mental disease. Poe never made a woman a narrator or plumbed the thoughts of a female character in detail. The type of violence and rage seems male. Sex or Freudian motivation would be a later interpretation and again not typical of Poe. The narrator begins as the highly sensitive Poe romantic whose senses and obsessions have gone to a narrowly focussed, claustrophobic descent into madness. The madness lies especially in the "logical" strategems the man creates to combat his fear that actually build his frenzy like the parallel heart rate misinterpretation whose escalation creates the triumph of the old man's return. The sane or fairly sane poetic heros in other Poe stories have some chance of conquering the wild mysteries and obsessive fears through application of reason. The Black cat is a step up to a man overthrown by alcoholism. In The Pit and the Pendulum the crazed victom manages a mental victory at least by using his wits and defying despair.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2002

he must have been A MAN

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002

I think the narrator of the story is, indeed, male. He was the slave, or overworked servent, of the houseowner. I think he may have been sane at one time, but, due to the stress of his working, he had been drivin to some level of insanity. The only relationship he had with the houseowner was that he worked for him and was oftin harassed in his work and despised him and the Eye to the point he plotted and carried out their death. This is only my opinion. If you look for the real truth, I doubt you'll find success in it for the only one who probably knows is Poe himself. Either him or someone close to him whom he told the base of the story to. Best of luck finding it!

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2002