I would like to know if you think the narrator in The Tell Tale Heart is crazy. It is a school project and would like to know other peopl's opinions.

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2002

Answers

Well, he did kill someone because of their eyeball, and then chop up the body in tiny pieces and put it in the floor. I believe he was crazy because...well...it's scary to think a sane person could do that!

-- Anonymous, May 25, 2002

Mad as a hatter and therefore any supernatural elements are in his imagination. Further proff would be that Poe did not like adding overtly supernatural elements as facts into his stories in general.

-- Anonymous, May 26, 2002

The narrator in The Tell Tail Heart is a sane man who had a moment of madness, do to his infatuation of the old mans eye. He is a man who is trying to covince the reader that his nervousness has caused him to be hypersensitive to the world, and so he is capable of seeing things that noother can. . In short he is slowly slipping into his own mental state of madness.

-- Anonymous, May 31, 2002

The narrator is a very confusing person, he is always trying to justify his actions and he thinks we doubt his mental status.

The narrator is telling the story as he is talking. As the story goes on, he keeps trying to make us believe he is a very smart person. He all ready knows his story might seem so wako that the readers might not believe him, he knows that we think he is crazy but he is doing everything to persuade us to think he is a normal, actually a very intelligent person. He says “Crazy people know nothing”; he is carry on comparing him self with a psycho, how hi did everything so perfect and that he was so bright, intelligent and clever and that a criminal wouldn’t do everything as he did.

-- Anonymous, September 06, 2003

He is as mad as a fish out of water. He kills a guy who invited him in his house after watching him for 8 days just because of his eye. And then he hears the heart beat of a dead guy in his head. He's a wacko.

-- Anonymous, February 18, 2004

hey we just read this story yesterday in class, but anyways the guy was a mad man because he says: the old man never hurt me, i loved him, i never wanted his treasure but..i think it was his eye...yes thats right his eye SPOILERS! * * * * * * * or something like that. this is a part when you know this dude is mad! then you find out he's a stalker. every night at 12:00 he sneaks into the old mans room and sees the eye and how its not open. then one day he goes and kill the old man. then when the police come he goes mad because he hears the beating of the heart and rips up the floor boards and there you go!

-- Anonymous, February 19, 2004

MICHELLE IS GAY

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2004

I think hes a nut!!!

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2004

yes, I think he is weird. I think you're weird to, you donno how to spell people's!!! ha what school do you go to that can't teach you how to spell people.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2004

He is definitely insane. The funny thing is that he's endeavouring to convince the reader of his sanity yet his attempt is doomed to failure. He is a psycho obsessed with an Evil Eye. Yet there is an obvious contradiction because the old man is depicted as a loving person, sby extremely nice. We can trace the Oedipus complex in this story as the narrator harms a person he likes. According to the narrator mad people know nothing...but that is wrong, think of Hannibal Lecter, mad people can be extremely witty, and so is the Tell-Tale Heart's narrator. His murder is well planned and he managed to hide the body and convince the police he was innocent...but his insanity gradually increases and reaches a climax when he confesses to the crime, he's panick-stricken but I also think he's so proud of the way he assassinated the old man that he wants the whole world to know how intelligent he is...in a nutshell his madness lies in his pride...

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2004

all of you guys who are using fancy words please stop because you are not helping and i know more than any of you. . . LOL

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2004

I know my post is kinda late but I'm going to give a response anyways. I believe that he is crazy. He hopes to elude the fact that he is but it is inevitable that this man (or women) is insane! In the end, when he (or she...) hears the heart pounding I believe that he was the only person in the room to hear it. My class was debating whether or not this is true but it has to be. The guilt came out and took over this persons mind! Brining up the fact that this person felt pity and guilt raises the questiong whether or not he is crazy up again. If the man was mad enogugh to commit the crime, wouldn't he feel no shame afterwards? It's a matter of personal opinion. Sorry if anything I said was confusing...

-- Anonymous, November 12, 2004

Me and my class read this peom in english and we had a discusion on wether he was insane or sane. It was sort of hard for me to figure out why he would kill a man because of his 'vulture eye'. We thought that because of this man's eye, the narrorator was fearful that the evil thing inside the man would do something bad to him. And at the end he gets guilty and tell's because he thinks hears the man's heart. But the man is dead so he's problaby hearing his heart or imagining it. Because of this he is mad.

-- Anonymous, December 08, 2004

yes hes crazy, its a theme in most of his prose

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2005